SCSI experiment: 3 samplers and 1 scsi reader (scsi2sd)

[@Silverfishmusic]

I am so happy to see another person with as many rackmount samplers as me. I was beginning to think I had a problem, but this proves it's perfectly normal! Thanks for your efforts with the SCSI2SD!

[@RoyMaya]

+Tyler Brown It's not normal - we both have a problem. lol

[@lownrgy]

guys guys you have rackmount samplers, I have the keyboard ones

[@antigen4]

funny - i have a rack of E4Xs with an identical perf metal spacer to the OPs above my top one... hmmm.. maybe it wants to have a CF card reader in that space too! funny....

[@TheBizzyBScience]

top vid man and cool idea , I'm going to hook up my s5000 with my s3000 and emu to talk business!

[@ShallRemainUnknown]

You can connect 4 samplers INDEPENDENTLY yet all wired at the same time to one SCSI2SD using a common, generic 4-way "data switch" box (most often made by Belkin, but plenty of generic ones exist). The box has five DB25 ports on back (1 for each of 4 devices/samplers "A", "B", "C", "D", plus 1 "I/O" port for the SCSI2SD), and a rotary selector knob on the front. Simply rotate knob to select the sampler you are using at the moment, giving you have access to all four samplers directly without multiple drive confusion and termination issues, but also without any rewiring necessary while using only one SCSI2SD. The switch boxes cost about $15 to $30 new.

[@totaltwit]

This is like walking into scsi-hell just for a laff! Good experiment, it's like a "who dares wins" and how we find out greater detail on how this kit operates.

[@JUKE179r]

Great tutorial! The SCSI2SD card is an excellent addition for our "retro" music gear. I have them in my ASR-10, MPC2000XL & MPC3000LE. Say good by to Zip disks!!! lol

[@roto8814]

Thx Roy for testing this! No, you are not alone, also samplers in my rack, Kurzweil, Roland Akai ;-)

[@soundlabsounddesign9392]

3:38 POOOOOOOOO! :) Thanks for doing this!

[@ErikHawk]

Awesome! Thanks for doing this and making this tutorial. Very helpful.

[@padlockbeats151]

i used to have a k2000r... such a beast!

[@padlockbeats151]

nice vid mate, subbed

[@Whaever_1981]

In order to daisy chain multiple SCSI samplers as you did here must the SCSI2SD device be external? Is it possible to also, for example, install the SCSI2SD card internally into the Akai S6000 floppy drive slot and then daisy chain the other samplers through the SCSI connectors on the back of the Akai S6000? The SCSI2SD I'm thinking of purchasing is the updated V6 model.

[@RoyMaya]

it might work, it just depends on the samplers that you'll be connecting. The main disadvantage to this is that you can't turn on the scsisd indepentatly from the sampler since it's internal. A lot of times you need to turn on the hard drive first (or scsi2sd in this case) before turning on the samplers. But it's worth a try.

[@Whaever_1981]

@@RoyMaya Excellent. Thx for the reply! :)

[@PATTHECATMCD]

Good result. I've come across controllers that just won't work unless they're the only controller on the SCSI bus

[@sonofdirt]

Bravo, looking to drop one in my K2VXS!

[@RoyMaya]

Its definitely worth it!

[@awkwardtom]

Thanks for posting this it has proved to be a useful resource of information, just one question though the scsi has one male 50 pin connector so how did you cable it to allow to be chained? Im trying to get mine setup to work between an akai s1000 and a s3000xl currenly just connected via ribbon cable to the s1000

[@RoyMaya]

I have it installed in a scsi case which has dual connectors. I used an old Syquest EZDrive 135 case. I have another video showing how I installed it.

[@load8118]

Absolutely great video! I am thinking about trying this out with my Rolands, an S-550 and an S-760. Do you think it'll work? What about the SCSI termination? Guess the reader has to be unterminated in this case as well.

[@RoyMaya]

I haven't tried it on an S-550 but it did work with my S-760. Good luck!

[@load8118]

@@RoyMaya Thanks! I'll let you know …

[@RoyMaya]

No I didn't bother - it was mostly an experiment. I pretty much have dedicated scsi2sd cards for each sampler - just makes things easier to manage. But if I had to share between samplers, I would probably do 2 at most.

[@piynubbunyip]

I have a scsi2sd card in my E-mu e64 but am having difficulty getting my S3200xl seeing it when I plug it in to the e64. Do I need a separate box for the scsi2sd ?

[@RoyMaya]

The scsi protocol wasn't really designed to have multiple hosts (samplers or computers) in the same chain, so you can definitely run into some problems, data corruption being one of them. You can kind of make it work sometimes but if you want hassle free operation multiple scsi2sd cards is the best way to go. I use multiple cards myself.

[@piynubbunyip]

Thanks@@RoyMaya

[@vileguile4]

Huge thanks for this!! I have an S5000. How fast would you say the Scsi2sd is compared to a scsi drive? For instance, how long would 100Mb of drum samples take to load? Or 100Mb of loops (in my case those i made on a korg electribe2). Can you unplug the SD and insert it in your pc and add samples or do you need a special program? For both the S5000 and the Ultra, what cables and adapters do you need? What settings? I bought them years ago but i had to give up as i never got it to work and the noise from the fan and hard drives made me go nuts :/ Thanks for any help!!

[@RoyMaya]

+Sleepydog I don't have a scsi drive, but I would say it's as fast as the scsi protocol allows. The real limitation here is the scsi bus speed and the sampler, not the scsi2sd. The scsi2sd card does support scsi-2, but I'm not sure if the Akai S5000 supports that speed. I'm gonna see if the S5000 supports scsi-2 and maybe compare the speed difference. For cables and adapters, it depends if you want it internally or externally. For internal all you need is the standard 50pin scsi cable. For external you can put it in a case or get a IDC50 to DB25 adapter. And power wise you don't need any power because it will get power form the scsi bus.

[@vileguile4]

Roy Maya great! thanks!

[@VintageMusicGearTV]

Great video thanks

[@robh7671]

Just come across your post, what 3D Software did you in your mock-up???

[@RoyMaya]

I used Maxon Cinema 4D.

[@mosspa1]

Just out of curiosity, did you try loading filrs off the E-Mu drive or the Akai drive onto the Kurzweil? Since the Kurz will read both of those formats I was wondering if you tried it this way using the SCSI2SD device. I know that the Kurz will read E-Mu and AKAI CDs fine, but accessing foreign files from a shared SCSI bus would make the capability even more interesting that it already has been shown to be. I wish I had rack space for some of the other older samplers.

[@geecen]

HEllo, I have just bought a e6400 classic and had a couple of Qs about the SCSI2SD if that's ok? I was wondering whether you could use it to burn iso disk images of sample libraries to partitions on the SD, while leaving other partitions for harddrive file systems? I hope so, as I really don't want to have to buy a scsi cd rom drive! Thanks for your help.

[@RoyMaya]

Yes, you can put cd-rom images onto the drive on the SCSI2Sd but you need to use another program for that, like WIn32 Disk Imager.

[@geecen]

Thanks for the info!

[@MoCheez]

I may sound a lil' off topic but… Is there a chance I can get the 3d models, or even the whole C4D scene? Just for the fun of it ;-)

[@ultragrid]

It seams to be very slow campared to a Compact Flash reader. Is it just so slow when they all are connected to the same SCSI Bus or is it so slow in general with the scsi2sd?

[@RoyMaya]

It's only this slow when I had all the samplers connected. I think I didn't have all the termination set correctly which could have affected the speed. Either way, this was just an experiment. I have separate scsi2sd's for each sampler now which works great.

[@EdinGacic]

did you find out why it was loading slow other 2 samplers?

[@modularcat5743]

Hi Roy, I have V4 of the board, its formatted in my kurzweil. When I put in my PC (translator and Total commander) its not detected, no folders or nothing? Back into the kurz its looking fine, how do you get the samples into the kurz?

[@RoyMaya]

That's interesting. Since it's FAT, the PC should be able to see it. I'm using V5 though, so maybe that has something to do with it. I've never tried a card from a V4 board. Or it could also be the OS version on your Kurzweil. Maybe the older versions used a proprietary file system and the later OS used FAT? I can't really remember.

[@modularcat5743]

just checked its revision 5b bios 4.2 How did you format the card? Something like acronis and divide up into 4 partitions? The Kurz formatted it and it vanished from PC. so weird.

[@RoyMaya]

I formatted it using the K2000r - no problems on my end.

[@awkwardtom]

hello again another question :) just wondered if you have to have the k2000 switched on before the s5000 can communicate with the scsi2sd drive or does this "pass thru" without power? thanks

[@RoyMaya]

That's a good question, unfortunately I never tried that so can't say if it would work. My setup is different now so I can't try that.

[@euclideszoto997]

Have you considered replacing the floppy drives with gotek emulators?

[@RoyMaya]

Yes, but only on samplers that don't support SCSI. For SCSI samplers I prefer scsi2sd.

[@Music-Gear]

Hi Roy, With the SCSI2SD, when you partition the sd card, into several partitions, A,B,C etc.. does the sampler automatically know that when you select the ID number 0, that its communicating with partition A, or if you select ID number 1, that its communicating with partition B on the SD Card, are is there some other way to assign this.

[@RoyMaya]

The short answer is yes. Although, to be exact they're not partitions (otherwise the sampler wouldn't recognize them) they're virtual drives. So to the sampler it's like you had 4 scsi drives connected with their own ID, that's why it works.

[@Music-Gear]

Thanks Roys, did you create the virtual drives with software, ?

[@RoyMaya]

Yeah, there's a utility/app that you use to configure the scsi2sd - it's pretty straight forward. You can download it from the scsi2sd site (codesrc.com).

[@Music-Gear]

Cheers Rod, Just Purchased Your Bracket for V.5 and the SCSI2SD board, for my Akai S3000XL, I may make a video on how to install it, and putting sample cds on the SD Card, Your Name and website will be mentioned on the video, if your OK with That

[@RoyMaya]

Looking forward to checking out that video. Appreciate it!

[@yayamando]

Hi Roy. I want to buy scsi2sd for my S3000XL as well. Which version that you use? And do you need to set it up first before use it or it's plug n play? I've seen lots of people set the card first.

[@RoyMaya]

I believe by default it has a 2gb partition set. You probably want to configure it first before using it, though. I don't have an S3000XL so I can't help you with that, but I know others have using it with the S3000, though. Good luck.

[@suadcokljat1045]

Maybe SCSI2SD V6 works faster. It would be great to test and compare.

[@WestonStephens]

Does the reader allow hot swap?

[@RoyMaya]

Sure does.

[@Astimoff]

Where can we purchase this card?

[@RoyMaya]

There are a couple of places that sell them depending on where you're located. Just google scsi2sd and you'll find a couple of places.

[@clemalford9768]

I sold all mine when software came along. Too much space taken and too much programming and button-pushing. Went back to being a musician!!

[@juno6]

Hi! I use a v5 SCSI2SD with a K2000S too, but yours is particularly slow. I had issues with mine, until I formatted my SD card with this www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ . That solved all my problems, it now works as fast as with a ZIP drive.

[@AlexxxandreGuillaume]

Hi, what is it for ? Why format the SD card ? I haven't did it and it works ?

[@antigen4]

so...let me get this straight... you're using the SCSI2SD EXTERNALLY and then just daisy chaining the samplers?

[@antigen4]

i ask because i'm wondering what the best solution is to share samples between two E4x samplers

[@RoyMaya]

That's correct! The scsi2sd only has 1 connect so you'll need an adapter or install it in a case (like I did) which has 2 connectors for daisy chaining.

[@antigen4]

fanks!