Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
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By Marek2kxl Sat Jun 14, 2008 9:10 am
Hey Guys,

I have an issue.
I recently bought myself an external hard disk case and a 9 gb Compaq MAB3091sp Hard disk to fit in the casing.

The case is connected to my mpc2000xl with a HD50 to HD68 external cable.
I got the MPC to find the HD .. it will show up in the LOAD screen showing the brand and the version and all that.
But I get a message with "SCSI NOT READY" when I try to format the drive.....

What can I do to make this work..... anybody ???

Any help is more than welcome....


(PS. The Termination is on on the drive, and The ID Is also set to a number that the MPC finds)
By scsiforsamplers.com Sat Jun 14, 2008 5:04 pm
It could mean many things. The first thing I think of is did the drive spin up? Just because you can see the info about the drive in the MPC doesn't mean the drive has spun up and is ready. Did you hear it go through the spin up process? Do you have an activity LED attached to the drive? If so, does the activity LED come on when you first power up the drive, blink a bit as the drive spins up and then go out? That is normal behavior - if the LED is staying lit solid, you have a problem.

Also, do you have the drive supplying 5 volt termination power to the bus? It probably has a jumper setting to enable that - be sure it is set.
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By Marek2kxl Sat Jun 14, 2008 6:42 pm
Hey man, thanx alot for your reply, I will check it out when I come home from work later...
Here's another question, which free software gives me the option to format hard disks to MPC2000XL format ? other than Chicken Translator..... preferably for a Mac.... I couldn't find anything....

thanx alot for your help man !!
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By Marek2kxl Sat Jun 14, 2008 6:49 pm
scsiforsamplers.com wrote:It could mean many things. The first thing I think of is did the drive spin up? Just because you can see the info about the drive in the MPC doesn't mean the drive has spun up and is ready. Did you hear it go through the spin up process? Do you have an activity LED attached to the drive? If so, does the activity LED come on when you first power up the drive, blink a bit as the drive spins up and then go out? That is normal behavior - if the LED is staying lit solid, you have a problem.

Also, do you have the drive supplying 5 volt termination power to the bus? It probably has a jumper setting to enable that - be sure it is set.


I have an internal terminator on the actual flatcable, should this be sufficient ?

thnx alot
By scsiforsamplers.com Sat Jun 14, 2008 7:06 pm
I don't believe there is such a program for the Mac - join the rest of the civilized world and get a PC! Just kidding... ???

An internal terminator on the ribbon cable should be fine - of course, be sure to put it after the hard drive.

cable from MPC -------> case scsi connector ------> HD ----> terminator
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By Marek2kxl Sat Jun 14, 2008 7:25 pm
Alright man, perfect thanx alot !

The thing is I don't have access to a pc with a scsi card... we do have a Mac here at my work which has one, that's why I was wondering...

So If I get it right you should first format the drive to a "mpc format" otherwise the whole thing doesn't work ??

thnx again
By scsiforsamplers.com Sat Jun 14, 2008 7:41 pm
Yes, the drive will have to be formatted for the XL; otherwise, it cannot be written to or read from. But formatting sounds like a secondary issue to what you report. If the MPC cannot access your drive, giving you the SCSI not ready message, you'll need to deal with that problem prior to formatting the drive. I don't believe that formatting the drive on an external box will remove that error message. That message generally signals a communications problem between the drive and sampler. :(
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By Marek2kxl Sat Jun 14, 2008 7:46 pm
OK cool, thnx for the fast replies !
I'll check it out later... I'll bring my mpc back to work later and try to to get it to function... if that won't work I'll still have some fun with it, maybe I'll hook it up to our SSL 6032 ;-) ... I'll have a good night anyway..

scsiforsamplers.com thanx alot for the response, if my hdd won't work I'll probably end up ordering a CF card reader from you guys !

Take it easy
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By LunaticBastard Tue Jun 17, 2008 4:07 am
i have a 9gb drive ill give you. just pay shipping.

edit: dude didnt realize you were in amsterdam. but ill still ship you the drive. hell ill ship you 2 of them if you want.
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By Marek2kxl Tue Jun 17, 2008 2:43 pm
Sounds cool man thnx, but I'll still want to give this one a try, the thing is like Scsiforsamplers.com said the drive doesn't spin up when connected to the mpc.
It does spin up when connected to the computer...:s