ZIP drives are probably the most common accessories that an MPC
owner should have, but with a bit of knowledge, it can be used to boost
MPC's
SCSI capability which is treated as though it don't exist by most software
vendors,
If you've ever thought that you're unfairly treated by makers
of Recycle, Wavelab, etc.
then you should find the info on this page pretty useful.
However, I only have PC at the moment and wouldn't know much
about Macintoshes.
maybe you could get around with PC exchange or something like that,
but as always,
DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK!
An extremely important notice:
If you divide a ZIP disk into several partitions when
formatting on MPC2000,
All the data except those on the first partition WILL
BE LOST AS SOON AS
you do anything to the disk on a PC.
If you already have a sound library of your own on disks like
that, I strongly recommend you to make
a disk to use only for transferring data to/from PC.
Another perhaps more important notice:
All ZIP drives are suspicable to this 'Click
of Death' problem which is now becoming
quite widely known. What happened to me was quite awful.
Basicaly,the drive suddenly makes this
creepy noise while it's operating and stop responding
to SCSI commands, so you have to
power off the drive and restart. After rebooting, all
I saw was a bunch of 'blahblah.snd not found'
errors and never been able to recover the data from the
disk. Since then, the drive seem to
work fine MOST OF THE TIME with other disks, but sometimes
hungs while loading.
and when it hungs, I have to try loading it several times
till I suceed.
I really don't like things made in some cheap places
and hope Iomega and OEM
vendors are more considerate. Mine's been like that just
after several months after
I purchased it. I'm not gonna bother phoning'em just
to be annoyed for things that
I ain't keep forever (where's your gurantee card? proof
of purchase?). It's not gonna get me my precious data back anyway.
It's funny that they advertise it to use for Backing
up data. Can't trust anything these days (sigh...)
And when you wanna transfer samples (.snd files) to a PC, you need to
be a bit more
careful with the file names. You can use up to 21 letters for each
file on MPC,
but this is done by using the reserved area of a DOS format disk. The
area is
used to store the long file names' information in windows 95 and above,
and
will confuse windows if you exceed the 8 + 3 letters limit of Dos file
system.
In the worst case, I can imagine losing all the data stored on the
disk,
so when transferring to PCs, make sure file names are in the form of
8 letters. plus 3 letters extension.
(e.g., 'EIGHTCHR.SND').
This bit below might be a bit of a useless knowledge
now, since MPC2000 can
save sounds in .wav format. but I'm gonna leave this
here as it might still be useful to some...
Once .snd files are transferred to a PC, they can be open with any application
such
as Cool Edit 96, as 16 bit Intel byte order, 44.1Khz (or 44100
Hz) Raw PCM data.
there is a header information at the beginning of the file that are
stored to keep
information about loop points, etc. but these are currently no use
as no software
on PC can recognize these information stored in the header. So just
cut these out.
You'll hear it as a 'Click' if you play the file loaded.
There are lots of lovely software on computers that can screw
your samples up
pretty nicely. Check on Links page and follow the links.
Software like WaveSurgeon is really handy for Drum'n'Bass kind of mashed
up beats.
It's only 15 odd quid to resister so why not show the man a respect?
and I'm
asking every visitor of this page to add comments when you resister
any software
to ask for a native support for MPC's file format. It would be very
nice if we could
save .snd files directly and just load it on MPC wouldn't it?.
end of the ancient method.
Now I hope the information above helped you to get more out of
your MPC2000,
but I don't think many of us can afford to get separate ZIP drives
for MPC and PC.
(If you can, then no need to read on.)
So I just decided to make them 'share' a ZIP drive in a awkward
way.
Before you begin:
Always turn both your machines off when pluging/unpluging
SCSI cables.
not for sure, but I've heard that the fuse on Akai's
SCSI port can be blown
more easily than the others'. really
sensible b***ches aren't they?
I'm using Adaptec 2920 PCI SCSI board on a pentium200MMX machine. Can't
be sure
if other systems work in the same way as mine. But if you've got anything
really important
to the system on the SCSI chain, (like booting from a SCSI hard drive
or Network interfaces)
I really wouldn't risk doing this on the same chain.
(Now I have a CD-writer in the chain too, but it seems to work fine
as long as either of the SCSI
masters is not doing something to the disk.)
1. Connect them
First turn off the machines and activate ZIP drive's terminator, and
set the ID to 5.
(which should have been if you've been using it with MPC), and connect
the other
port of ZIP drive to the PC. It doesn't matter which port you connect
as those
on the ZIP drive is electronically the same thing.
In this way, you are creating 2 SCSI chains one for each MPC and PC,
which
overlaps at the ZIP drive.
The first big problem is that any SCSI device would assume that there
is only
one computer (initiator) in a SCSI chain. But it seems like that MPC
doesn't
send any command over SCSI unless it is in DISK mode. I usually boot
MPC first from a FD and load all the basic sounds I need ( the tr-909
kit is
very often all what I need ) and go to main screen before turning my
PC on.
Then turn the PC on. After it initializes, there should be only
ZIP drive
recognised by the PC.
Then load anything you need on your machine to access the ZIP
drive.
If it's mounted properly, you can be pretty sure that you have won
this time.
Format a disk on the MPC2000 just as they are and see if windows
can recognize the file system. If it can, (and it works on both 95/98
and NT in my setting)
try saving a .wav file on the drive and try reading it on MPC2000.
But just be careful on the filenames as described above.
I only transfer samples in this way and save complete programs to
a disk that is NOT to be touched by the PC in any ways.
If anything weird happens, just eject the disk using the eject button
ON THE ZIP DRIVE and let the system read the drive. Once it
says
'there is no disk in the drive' or something similar, it clears any
info
that doesn't match the actual disk image. insert back the disk and
continue.
but once thing you really mustn't do is
NEVER ACCESS THE DISK AT THE SAME TIME.
While PC is reading / Writing, a message 'SCSI NOT READY' appears
on MPC2000's screen. so I believe those clever boys at Akai's done
something
to avoid the worst. But it's always better to be on the safe side thou.
I heard that some people use SCSI CD-ROM drives in their computers
in a similar way. amazing.
now enjoy the beat hacking!
One thing I forgot to put:
NEVER run check disk utility on MPC formatted ZIP disks. It would definitely
report that the file names are all corrupted and might replace them
for you
in a useless way.
Once again a quick summary as so many people seem
confused:
Your PC do NOT directly communicate with MPC,
but talk to
MPC though ZIP drive using it a sort of 'translator'
if you like.
I'm only tricking to connect MPC2000 and a PC onto
one
single ZIP drive to save money & time.