Storage alternatives

I finally made up my mind about the mpc1000 vs mpc2000xl (after getting additional info from the akai csc) and I will go for the mpc2000xl (250 zip 32 mb 8 outs). Is there any alternatives for the 250 zip drive ? I hear all these horror stories about failing zipdrives and i'm also concerned about the 'limited' storage capacity of a 250 zip. I think it was lampdog who at some point was investigating the installation of and IDE card reader int the mpc2000xl. Is this doable and if so what is the maximum size of a cfcard ?
If there's anybody who uses harddisks then I would like to hear about it.
Should I be worried about the availability of ZiP drives/disks ?
Finally what do you guys think about the fx board is it worth the money or would I be better of spending that money on some vinyls ?

I know it's a lot of questions but answers would be very welcome.

tx in advance from a soon-to-be mpc2000xl owner.

"i'm also concerned about the 'limited' storage capacity of a 250 zip."

That is easy. Buy more than one Zip disk.

"IDE card reader"

I have not found an IDE card reader that works in the MPC. Are you sure LD was not referring to SCSI card reader?

"what is the maximum size of a cfcard "

In theory an MPC2000XL can use a 27 gig CF card. It could also use a 27 gig Zip drive, but they do not make those either.

"Should I be worried about the availability of ZiP drives/disks ?"

The problem is they are `too available` and thus too frequently used. This coupled along with high failure rates cause people like me avoid them like the plague.

Finally what do you guys think about the fx board is it worth the money or would I be better of spending that money on some vinyls ?

Try a search for EB16 on these forums as we've had a fair few discussions about it

yes, there was some discussion about it but mpc3000 quickly nipped that in the bud....I think you should just stick to the internal zip drive.....some people can't seem to comprehend the fact that an internal one will more than likely give you fewer headaches than a scsi one-just do a search for how many questions we have a week on the topic of scsi...a good scsi hard drive would make an excellent backup to an internal zip as thats what i've been palnning on doing for awhile now....

as for the eb16..its most definetly worth it to get one.....though I wouldnt kid myself into thinking i'm getting some fancy lexicon unit fx with this but the fx are versatile enough to get the job done and hen some...you'll love it and wonder how you ever got along wihtout it......

the ish makes since........ I will go with Internal 100MB, I have a partner who uses 250, kind of had some problems. So Internal 100 MB and EXT CD is what I will use. So sounds will be loaded from CD that are downloaded and I will save most sounds to CD and leave the ZIP for sequence data and not sounds. Plus, CD's are hella cheap and I can back them up in the masses! Thanks Swiss, Tutor and all!

Don't have to worry about data being lost on CD's and more than likely the Zip may fail in airport X-Ray, or possibly can fail, at least all my tunes will be on CD. And like someone stated a HD can be useful, plus I can dump sequence data to webspace and pull that data from there at a remote location and save to CD?? Right? Sequences can be saved to disk, via ZIP, PC interface???

I haven't spoke to my friend who was going to test the card drive in the MPC for me and I have given up on it anyway. I will just stick with my 250 internal IDE ZIP and plextor external SCSI CDROM. I'm happy with that and there is no real reason for me to change. I was just being greedy seeing as my devices have never given me any problem.

If you have no way to do effects then I would get the eb16, it's a fair card that IMO is underated and gets slept on quite a bit.

If you have other effects than do the vinyl, it's all in how you wanna work. Outboard effects might be tedious but they might be superior to the eb16, it's really all in how you wanna work though. I use a mix of both, software and hardware effects.