emusonacid!

Hi all,

I'm about to purchase a compact flash card, to put into my e6400 Ultra (http://scsiforsamplers.com).

First, the way I currently use my sampler : it has a 3.5 IDE drive into it, and I have the sampler connected to the PC via the external SCSI port.
So there is nothing connected on my internal SCSI socket, just the hard drive on the IDE socket.

So here are my questions :

- Is it a problem to have both the external SCSI port and internal SCSI socket for the CF card connected together, up and running ? Will there be some kind of conflict ?
- Will the sampler see both media simultaneously (mean, my IDE drive + the CF card) ? Still no conflict ?

More globally, do you think about any conflict possible with this configuration (IDE HD + SCSI port connected to PC + CF reader on internal SCSI socket) ?

Thanks all for your comments,

Olivier

Ok I posted the questions directly to the scsiforsamplers.com guy, he answered me quite fast that there would be no conflict.
I trusted him, and placed my order.
As they couldn't ship to France, I gave the address of a friend of mine's who lives in San Francisco.

I'll feedback my impressions as soon as everything's connected

Cheers,

Aerodrink

I did this mod and its great. I have an E5000 with RFX. I've noticed my boot time is alot longer now but having the CF card is fantastic.

om wrote:I did this mod and its great. I have an E5000 with RFX. I've noticed my boot time is alot longer now but having the CF card is fantastic.

Wich card do you have ? Extern / Intern ?

http://www.scsiforsamplers.com/prodlist.asp?emu

What do you mean with startup longer ? How much longer ?

How is it with the Noise ?

For me is this interested , because i hate the noise from the Hard Disk.

Which card do you have ? Extern / Intern ?

I bought the internal version for my e5000.

What do you mean with startup longer ? How much longer ?

My start up time with the card reader installed is 90 secs (which doesn't include the 30 additional seconds that it needs to load the 41mb bank that it autoloads).

How is it with the Noise ?

Absolutely no noise. There are no moving parts, so it makes no noise.

I'm a bit confused here. I am assuming when replacing the internal 20gb HD from an emu with a CF reader, would'nt you be downgrading to having less memory???
I was browsing thru the (http://scsiforsamplers.com) site and it reads that the CF max size is 8gb. What are the benefits, confused here?/:


Thanks

The CF reader doesn't replace the hard drive. It replaces the floppy disk drive (or if you like, you can get the external CF card reader, which replaces nothing!).

-Fox

Ok, it took two months to get the CF reader but it finally arrived yesterday.
I mounted it in the sampler today and it really, really rocks !

The thing is : it requires the same voltage as the floppy disk (+ the floppy disk front bay location). So usually you get rid of the floppy reader, and you take the power from the ex-floppy power cable (using only 2 pins on 4, providing you with the required +5v). But if you have no floppy connected to the sampler, you'll have to wait something like a minute or so before the OS finally gets loaded, and I find this is completely annoying. So what I did is I kept the floppy (mounted and screwed inside the sampler - at the back, at the HD place) and found another way to get the required +5v (derivation on the HD's power cable).

In addition, as the CF reader connects to the internal SCSI port, I decided to keep my internal IDE hard drive which has 137 Gb (and which is unplugged at the moment because I only intend to use it as backup), but when it's connected, I can see in the disk manager : the floppy, the HD, and the CF. By the way, I took a 32 Gb CF and it works like heaven in the reader; I got same loading times with it than with my HD (which is a 7200 rpm) but my CF card is a Kingston Elite Pro x133 speed.

I have to say that all this installation was a little bit tricky to get everything running (got to be very careful with the cables, multimeter, the way you test etc.), and I would probably not recommand the CF reader for someone that never opened his sampler and has no minimum ability in electricity or electronics.

Perhaps some of you remember that in another thread I discussed about the voltage regulator (a simple pot) I had installed on the power fan, to reduce the noise. Well, I tried to totally stop the fan and I didn't get into overheating or any other problem so far. So now, my e6400 Ultra + Rfx32 + Adat + 32 Gb CF is 100% noiseless ! Having that said, I only tested for myself, only during a few days, and don't want to be responsible if you try on your sampler and overheat it to death or what soever .

It seems like there is no other CF reader to sell at the moment at http://www.scsiforsamplers.com, but perhaps if some of you are interrested you should mail the guy; he usually replies in a couple of hours.

Ok folks, that was my lastest feedback on my experiments ... hope it'll helps !
By the way, I wish all of you a happy new year, and forgive my approximate english

Olivier

Ground the ready line (or pull it down to 0V) to make the Emu think it has a floppy installed.

i.e. a jumper across pin 34 (RDY) and Pin 33 (GND) on the Floppy 34 pin header.

No delays at startup.

Anyone have any schematics of the motherboard to confirm the need for a pull down resistor?

M

Hi Kalide,

Did you do this mod on your own Emu ?
I once tried this 33-34 trick but with no success ... well perhaps I had made a mistake.
I'll try this again later, since the only time you need floppy only is when you upgrade the OS to 4.7

Olivier

did i understood this right?
You work without the Fan ?
Silence ?
No Problems? Hot ?
You have the RFX card Installed ?

Michael

Hi Michael,

1/ Yes you did
2/ Yes
3/ You bet

4/ & 5/ Until now no problem but I've been doing it iteratively :

- first : without the RFX (which is known to get very hot, even in IDLE), and without the sampler's cover.
I noticed quite little heat from the PSU (less than I was expecting), so I decided to go on with testing.
As a piece of info : I got the 47 Watt PSU (I believe it's 47 W, well, anyway it's the "small" one, the factory one in fact)

- then : with the RFX, cover still opened.

Before I tried to run the sampler with its fan 100% off, I've been working for months with, say only 5-10% of its full voltage (thanks to the regulator mod), so it was rather silent. But : the Rfx was mounted, the HD was most of the time running (not in sleep mode I mean), the samplers cover was mounted and I never saw any problem.

The result of this tests makes me believe that E-mu decided to avoid any problems of hardware breakdowns (for instance PSU but more generally, any other component in the sampler, like HD) due to overheating, by installing this fan. By the way, at this time (1999 -> 2001) all hard drives (including IDE ones) were pretty (if not very) noisy so I believe they didn't really felt concerned by the noise topic. Well ... even the computers were very noisy then, and no one was complaning (except you and me, I mean )

Now, the next step is : this week I'm waiting for adhesive heatsinks (purchased on ebay) to install on the RFX, cause I think the R-Chips and the metallic plate of the RFX gets a little too hot, even if I never went into trouble with it anyway. On my 5th picture you can notice that I removed the metallic protection for optional items on the rear. This provides a few holes. The final step is : I'll put the heatsinks on the RFX, then I'll put the samplers cover (then I pray ).

2 thoughts as little conclusion :
- I'm quite sure any hard drive or RFX needs fresh air more that the embeded PSU does
- If you decide to make tests, do things iteratively, taking your time before changing the conditions

Of course ... do it at your own risk, perhaps your PSU is much more tired than mine ... :-/

Hope it'll help anyway !

Olivier

great post!! i have one of these atapi cf readers which i got for a mpc2000xl years ago...so i guess i can use it to replace the floppy and then switch power cable to two wires so its 5v? or am i wrong? any special procedure required when installed or does it see the cf reader automatically?

Way back in the late 1980's when i had an Amiga 2000 and a GVP 030 accelerator card which ran super hot (and would crash), I added an internal low speed fan to the mix. A large, suspended 6" diameter fan which ran silently (20 db or less ambient noise). I might try one of those for my RFX - that beast runs like the old GVP card did - you can warm up your coffee with it.

Some of these are worth a look:

http://www.zalman.co.kr/ENG/product/Cat ... orySecond=

Kalide : late 80's ... good old years I don't kow how many hours I spent on my Atari STF 1024, making GFA Basic programs (GFA was quite powerfull at that time for a "basic like" language). Also spending time programming my brand new DX7-s )

I've received the heatsinks and mounted them. They are great and do a good job on the Rfx, plus they're adhesive which simplifies installation. The pack countains 8 pieces; 2 can go directly on each R-Chip, and the remaining 6 are perfect on the other (metallic) side of Rfx (makes two lines of 3 heatsinks).

Here is the link to where I purchased them :

http://cgi.ebay.com/8-Low-Profile-Alumi ... %26ps%3D63

I live in France, they arrived from the US in less than 2 weeks. I think it's a great solution either for a passive solution or combined with an undervoltaged fan.

Cheers,

Olivier