Alright, im getting pretty frustrated with the community here. As of now we have 871 registered members on emusonacid. Many of us are very passionate about our Emu's. Many of us dearly wish to continue to use them and make use of SCSI SMDI sample dumps.
Currently, the situation of SCSI SMDI for the EMU is pretty pathetic. On OS X, SCSI is an abomination. Adaptec stopped supporting Mac OS X back in 2002 so their drivers a completely foobar'd. Firstly, there are no PCI-Express SCSI cards under $500 to work with current Mac's. Older PCI Mac's running OS X have 2 applications that support SMDI dumps to samplers, Peak $500+ its slow as poo and locks up the EMU with a SMDI Xfer Timeout message which requires the EMU to be restarted. The other app is DSP-Quattro 119,00 euro 149.00 US$ but this also locks up the EMU with the same error. The A$$holes @ Propeller heads took years to release a Mac OS X version of Recycle, but in the process shafted us by completely removing all support for SCSI Samplers..wankers!!
The only cheap SCSI alternative for a non PCI Mac is the Ratoc Firewire to SCSI adapter, which in my situation is useless because it doesn't support daisy chaining. Then we come to the ONLY workable solution on the Mac. A PowerMac G3 or G4 that boots Mac OS 9x. These machines have PCI and cheap Adaptec 2960/2930 SCSI cards can be used. Peak and Recycle 2.0 work perfectly. But who the hell what's another huge old G4 siting around just to SCSI a sample across?? NOT ME!! Zuonics can't develop ZoEOS for MacOS 9x because it it JAVA based and if you had any idea of the state of Java on Mac OS 9x you'd understand this impossibility.
The only option as far as I can see (and im building now) is a cheapo small miniATX WinXP PC. A cheap Intel board with a single PCI slot can be bought for less than 100bux, a dual core Intel Core 2 duo for stupidly low amount. Im pleased now to relinquish my Mac OS X ambitions for ZoEOS, im doing a dedicated PC machine now for it.
I purchased ZoEOS when it first came out for 130 Euro in the anticipation of a Mac OS X version. I tested briefly on a PC back then and was surprised at how brilliant this worked. SCSI dumps were so smooth and trouble free. The preset creating and naming etc from the keyboard made using the EMU so much better that the front panel of the EMU.
I do have a few wishes for this software but sadly this may never happen. From what i've read only about 50 ppl have bothered to buy ZoEOS which is a huge shame considering I is our very last option for controlling the EMU and having it integrated with our current workflows. I think the potential of this app is HUGE. I fear however, the ultimate fate of the development is in demise due to the overwhelmingly low interest level. At the current asking price of 55 euros i think it is a great investment, not to be passed up. If we had 800+ of the members here buy this thing we could see a prosperous future for this application and have it developed further into other directions that could make it infinitely more useful. Like allowing ZoEOS to access the hard drives connected to the EMU's for transfer/receiving Banks over SCSI.
The dude who develops this is hugely talented and really is doing us all emuons a massive service for developing such an app which no-one else on the planet including emu gives a toss about.
I'd like to see ppl respond here to at least make their presence know as to their interest in the future of this apps.
bigups