scsi HD to mac g4?

Please help! I have a 1gb scsi hard drive that I use to store my mpc files, and it's now full. How can I transfer the contents of my HD to the Hard drive on a mac G4 (mdd) that only has a cd drive, usb, and firewire connections. i have access to an external scsi zip drive if that helps the situation, but i still dont know how to connect it into the G4. Is there a special cable or do i have to install something like a zip drive or scsi port in the computer? I would like to start storing/backing up my mpc files to the computer as well as use the MPC fileCreator program. I've asked several people and no one seems to be able to give me a straight answer. Please help - I'm all outta hard drive. Thanks in advance.

You need something like this:

http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/product/prodtechindex.html?sess=no&language=English+US&cat=%2fTechnology%2fMacintosh

It is one thing to connect the disk to your mac, a scsi interface will do that 4 you, but it is another issue to read the data. The mpc stores afaik its data on the harddisk on a FAT16 (aka DOS) partition. If the mac can read this data then there should be no problem. Copy data from scsi harddisk to mac harddisk burn it on a set of cds.

Me guesses.

Yeah. The G4 has no built in way of communicating with a SCSI device. You can get a SCSI adapter or PCI SCSI card and the Mac will probably see the hard drive. However, the MPC disks can be problemattic and you can end up with a drive that is unreadable by both the MPC and the Mac. All of your files could be lost.

I suggest that you just connect that hard drive to your MPC and get a SCSI zip drive with a bunch of zip disks. This is the configuration that I use. I store all of my important files on the hard drive and use the Zip disks to move sounds back and forth from my Mac to my MPC. I also use MPCPGMMaker software. (Do a search here for the web address.)

In order to do this, you will also need a zip drive in your Mac.

Do a search on this subject or a search of my posts and you will eventually you find the details.

al in all, be very careful with SCSI drives and connecting them between MPCs and any computers.

Peace and good luck.

damn! sounds like i have to invest in a zip drive. I've avoided that for years and now that zip technology is about done i have to buy one. oh well. So now the question is can I buy one external zip drive that I can use interchangably (sp?) btween the mpc (scsi), and a mac computer (usb and firewire). Do they make some type of conversion cable that might lend itself well to my situation? thanks for the help.

I saw a converter on the link that nospoon posted, however i noticed that is is not supported by osx which is what i'm using for my other audio programs. so any other suggestions?

Hate to suggest it, but how about two external Zips? A SCSI for the MPC and a USB for the Mac. Saw one in MacAddict for $35.00 - www.megamacs.com.

Or you can check out an Adaptec SCSI (PCI) Card 2906, which is on the same webpage. Then you would have o shut down stuff to switch the Zip from unit to unit. I think the two Zip solution will save your sanity. Trust me. It saves mine.

Peace.

thanks for the tips. I just borrowed 2 zip drives from a friend (scsi and usb) and i plan on doing the transfers asap. since it sounds like we have a similar setup and both use mpceditor (at least i want to). is there anything i should know about formatting discs, loading them into the mac, or anything that could go wrong throughout the transfer process? when and where do you convert the mpc .snd files into .aiff or .wav? thanks a lot for your help. illadelph -rock on!

I hope you meant to say that you would use MPCPGMMaker. You can't use MPC Editor on a Mac. The other program is just as powerful. I use it almost everyday.

Peace.

thats what i meant - mpc pgm editor. any tips?