emusonacid!

Hi everybody, just joined this forum as I have just bought an EX4T Ultra. I've never had anything to do with SCSI in my life before, so was wondering if anyone could tell me if this SCSI card and zip drive would work with my sampler. This is the SCSI card:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... 0335371156

And this is the SCSI zip drive:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... 0316933264

Any help gratefully received. Sorry to start a new thread with my first post here, but I didn't want to hijack someone else's.

Cheers,

Kieran

I notice the auction was finished but it should work fine.

Hey there, thanks for the response. After some intensive research, I have found a few more SCSI card candidates.

Would I be correct in thinking that I can transfer samples directly to and from the Emu's internal hard drive using Recycle 2.0 via SCSI, i.e. I don't need a zip drive? It would certainly be convenient if that's the case.

Thanks again for your help. I'm on a PC BTW.

Yes but there are a few caveats. For example (and I'm not an expert) it may not work if you are running OS4.7 - I think - something to do with the EMU showing up as a FAT drive and crashing. Also, the latest version of recycle no longer supports SMDI (SCSI Musical Data Interchange). I think you'll be ok with version 2.0 but it's worth checking. In any case if you buy the latest version Propellerheads will sell you legacy discs for £10 or something.

For what it's worth I happily swap samples from via Sony Soundforge (I'm using V8 but the latest version still supports SMDI) to an Esynth Ultra running OS 4.61.

Good articles that will help:

http://www.tweakheadz.com/surviving_scsi_hell.html

http://www.tweakheadz.com/scsi_transfer ... ampler.htm

Hope that helps

Jon

I hadn't heard that about the latest OS. I suppose I'll just have to suck it and see. I have determined that my version of Recycle will support the transfer of samples to and from the sampler, so now it's just a matter of trying to get everything talking to each other without explosions etc. One last question, is there any way to transfer keymapped samples to the Emu? For example, I have lots of multisamples of my JD990 which I'd like to transfer. Will I have to transfer the samples and map them in the Emu, or is there another way to do it? Does anyone know if this is possible with Wavesurgeon?

Once again, thanks for all your help.

Kieran.

* OK I lied, I have another question. I just discovered that I can convert Kontakt (.nki) instruments into .eos files. The question, then, is this; is the only way to transfer the .eos file to the Emu via burning a CD-rom? I ask because I don't have an SCSI CD-rom drive. Is there any way to transmit an .eos file directly via SCSI?

Sorry for the long post. I promise I'll shut up when I know what the hell I'm doing

Not sure I'm afraid. I swap loops and drum samples over which isn't the same (?)

Re the .nki files....SMDI only works for wavs. ZeoEOS can transmit eos files (I think) but is no longer supported though you may still be able to buy it. Otherwise look at programs such as CDExtract or Chicken Systems translator. At the very least these will be able to translate to wav so you can use SMDI.
To be honest it sounds like a lot of hassle!!

Finally, wait for somebody else to chip in about using SMDI with 4.7 - I can't remeber specifics but I have a nagging feeling that something bad could happen to the EMU's hardrive when you cannect a FAT formatted Ultra to a PC. I could have misunderstood so it's worth waiting to see if anybody else can shine any light on this....

Cool, thanks for all your help. I'll probably go the zip disk option in the meantime, if I can find a couple of drives cheap enough. There's a very real chance my head might explode learning all this stuff.

Thanks again,

K

No probs!

Also, I've been refreshing my memory by reading the links I sent you. SCSI connection under 4.7 is only a problem if the PC has SCSI hardrives (presumably internal as well as external) and should be fine if it hasn't.

Jon

It's been quite a learning curve just loading samples, making presets, building banks etc, so it's probably best I don't have the means to load a heap of samples at once

FAT drives and EOS 4.7

The manual seems to say that:

• internal IDE drives are not exposed on the SCSI bus and so are OK regardless of their formatting
  
• EOS formatted SCSI drives on the SCSI bus with a computer (EOS 4.7) are also OK
  
• FAT formatted SCSI drives on the SCSI bus with a computer are bad and will loose data

This makes sense to me if it's a 'drive controller' problem. The drive controllers in the sampler and in the computer are not designed to seek out and coordinate with other drive controllers on the SCSI bus, and they maintain their own copy of the FAT in RAM to speed up access. So any writable drive that is mounted by both the computer and the sampler at the same time will be at risk of loosing data because both controllers will write to the drive independently, overwriting changes made by the other. Of course the file allocation table - or FAT - is a file itself, albeit one only visible to the drive controller, stored in a protected area of the disc containing an index of all of the files on the rest of the drive. If two drive controllers try to take control of the same drive, they will both make changes to the FAT, corrupting this index. A bit like tearing random pages out of the index of a big encyclopeadia.

EOS formatted drives cannot normally be read by a computer, and thus are not normally mounted and as a consequence, safe. AFAIR Windows 95 is an exception - it will try to mount the EOS drive, tell you it's not formatted and offer you the option of formatting it! I believe there is a registry fix commonly applied to vintage computers running '95

Steve

Awesome, thanks for that clarification. I think short term I'll just go the scsi pci card to transfer wavs back and forth, and then try and track down an scsi compact flash reader or a zip drive when funds permit, as well as an ide hard drive.

I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying the sampler, even without any PC connectivity. I've never used a hardware sampler before (been using Kontakt for the past few years). I'm finding myself manipulating/modulating each sample a lot more, rather than just loading a heap of sounds and coating them in effects, as I tend to do with software.

My girlfriend's got an Ensoniq TS-12 which has been gathering dust for ages, so I'm having fun programming/sampling that. The only thing I'm finding a pain is trying to get glitch-free loops, especially single-cycle type stuff.

Thanks again for the help everyone.