Wednesday, 21 September 2016

Rebirth Of Old Hardware Samplers (Akai, Emu, etc...)

SCSI2SD

The SCSI Hard Drive Emulator

So up to about one year ago, it was very difficult for a person committed to hardware samplers to find a SCSI Memory Card solution. Fortunately, that's changing. There are two products, one designed by a single person in Japan, the other by open source development in Australia, that are finally presenting an adequate solution that addresses the supply problem as well as being compatible with all samplers. For the solutions listed below, they seem to be compatible with all SCSI samplers that we know of.
The first is SCSI2SD. This is a open-source project headed by a guy named Michael. It's a combination of PCB board design and firmware that programs the chip on the board. Obviously there is more to the market than just samplers - this includes old Mac Powerbooks and other legacy SCSI gear. The open-source nature of the projects comes out clear here in the WIKI: "For those of you upset over the [price] increase, please keep in mind that SCSI2SDis open source, and you have rights to build, modify, and sell the boards yourself. Everyone else has the right to build the boards and sell them for the original price." In other words, Michael makes his own boards and sells them just like anyone else can. But he's the only game in town as far as SCSI2SD goes, and typically it all boils down to one expert in niche things like this. Michael's boards are currently sold by iMall in Australia and shipped from China. The price is about $70 US dollars, not a bad price!
Currently the board works with MicroSD cards, which are a bit too small to handle but possible. As shipped, the board handles only up to 2GB. There is an option to update the firmware via your computer to handle more, but we tried it and it doesn't work. So for now it's limited to 2GB. There is a hotswap option but it (!) requires cutting a trace on the circuit board!!! Yipes.

more info....

Purchase

The new V6 board and 2.5" PowerBook version are available at:

codesrc.com (Australia)

The 3.5" boards are available from the following distributors:

itead (China)

Inertial Computing (USA)

AmigaKit (UK)

3rd party accessories

nibblernibbles has created a 3d-printable external enclosure for the SCSI2SD + DB25 adapter, available at Thingiverse. Power can be supplied over USB for hosts which don't supply termination power.

Akai S1000 3d-printable bracket by roymaya



Samplers:

Roland JS-30 Sampler
Roland W-30
Roland VS2480
Roland S-760, S-770
Akai S950
Akai S1000, S3200, S3000XL, MPC 2000XL, DPS 12
EMU Emulator E4X with EOS 3.00b and E6400 (classic) with Eos 4.01
EMU E6400 w/ EOS2.80f
EMU Emax1, Emax 2
E-Mu Emax video
Emax 2 video
E-mu EIIIXP, EIIIXS
Emu ESI2000, ESI4000
Ensoniq ASR-X, ASR-10 (from v3.4, 2GB size limit)
ASR-X resets when writing to devices > 2Gb.
ASRX example video
ASR10 installation photos
Ensoniq EPS16+
Kurzweil K2000R
Kurzweil K2500XS
Casio FZ-20M
Yamaha A5000, A3000, EX5, EX5R
EMU ESI4000 [1] [2]


This is a great site, for all the tools and software you need for your hardware sampler, whether it editing, converting, transferring samples over midi, usb, or  card etc... MARTIN78

Transferring

How to transfer Roland-format sample CDs onto SD cards using a PC, SCSI2SD and Win32 Disk Imager. Performing this on a PC saves you a lot of time versus doing it on a sampler, which takes between 3 to 4 hours per CD. You can also do this for other vintage samplers like Akai, Ensoniq and E-mu.