emusonacid!

I pulled my beloved E6400 Ultra out of the closet after a 5 year hiatus. Powered it on and the 11 year old IDE drive started clicking from the getgo and is pretty much dead. So I took the hard drive out and started researching what to do next pouring over this forum and gearslutz trying to gain the knowledge.

First thing I did today was burn floppys for flash prep and EOS 4.7 from Emu's (Creative Labs) website. All went well and I know have the EMU running on OS 4.7. One thing to keep in mind when upgrading is that the screen will look blank but if you look at it from an angle with your head below the screen you can make out faintly the graphics on the screen. The next step is to get a card reader to replace the floppy so I can move wavs from the computer to the EMU and then record banks onto the Card and back these up on the computer as well using the Fat 32 compact flah card.

Here are my questions.
1) From reading on this forum the SCM PCD-50b with the PCMICA to CF Adapter from mechware is my best solution. Is there any other card reader solutions or another option I'm missing? I don't want to connect the emu to the computer via SCSI, I want to replace the floppy with a card reader or some kind of removable media I can swap back and forth with the computer. http://a4000t.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=68&products_id=195

2) The SCM PCD-50b can be connected internally and all I need is a SCSI cable to connect the SCM to the EMU board? Do I need to worry about the 4 Pin Molex power cable at all (Something about reverse polarity)? I'm thinking that the one that I was using for IDE drive can now be used to power the SCM.

3) If the SCM PCD-50b is the best option can I get compact flash cards that are larger than 2gb and will they work in the Ultra? I read on one post about only certain cards working, but it was not for an Emu sampler. I think an 8gb card would work well for me.

Many thanks for help and I'll post some pics once I get it up and running.
Stout

Hi Stout

nice to have you here.

Answer 1:
The SCM PCD-50B is the best solution.
With EOSFAT you can use CF-cards up to 16GB. Because of limitations of EMUs filesystem, a larger CF-card does not make sense.
When using FAT32 as filesystem you can use CF-cards with up to 128GB. IMO are cards with more than 16GB too pricey.

Answer 2:
Yes, only the SCSI-cable and the power-cable that was connected to the internal IDE-HD are required.
You also have to short Pin 33 & 34 of the floppy connector with a jumper. Else EOS will check the floppy drive for READY-state with the result that the boot-process and any access to the disk-drives will take more time.

Answer 3:
I'm using two SanDisk Ultra (30 MB/s), 8Gb and 16GB. I also checked a Kingston elite (133x) 4GB and an older Transcend 256MB from a camera.
If a CF-card will work with EOS is not a question of EOS and the CF-Card. It's a question of compatibility between Cardreader, PCMCIA-to-CF adapter and the CF-card.
Any of them are working.

As the maximum transfer rate of the E4 (SCSI-chip) is 1.5 MB/s (= 10x CD-ROM single-speed), you can use any CF-card.
SCM tested about 10 years ago the transfer rate of PCD-50B with at that time available CF-cards and measured a rate of about 2.5 MB/s (approx. 17x CD-ROM single-speed).

If you have a larger library for your E4 I recommend using an internal IDE-HD (e.g. WD800BEVE or WD1200BEVE) for your library and the CF-card for import, export and backup-to-PC of the banks and wav-files.
When using an internal IDE-HD and the PCD-50B connected to the internal SCSI-bus, you have to be carefull with the power-cable because of the switched +5V and +12V lines.

Cheers,
mosrob

mosrob - thanks for this info, it was exactly what I was looking for :)

Great info!

So the only other question on the power cables is that If I use whats already in the Emu then I'm fine since the polarity is already switched? Any new cables though and I need to be carefull. Is the polarity switched for the floppy power cable as well?

Yes you can use the power cables that are already used in the E4.

And ...Yes, the voltage lines of the floppy power are switched as well.
Take a look at the description of the connector on the mainboard.
The +5V and +12V lines are switched.
You can use a standard power cable and exchange the outer cables on one of the connectors. That's it.

By the way:
As I already mentioned in another posting, the PCD-50B is capable of hot plugging.
You can pull the PCMCIA-to-CF adapter out of the cardreader slot and plug it in again while the PCD-50B is powered on.
But:
You should never pull the CF-card out of the PCMCIA-to-CF adapter while the PCMCIA-adapter is inserted in the slot.
This would damage the CF-card, resulting in loss of data, and the PCMCIA-to-CF adapter. ... and maybe the slot of the PCD-50B also.

Is there any benefit to formatting the CF card on the Emu compared to the computer for Fat32?

Ok, got the card reader and installed it without to much hassel (had to change scsi ID to 2). My first SCSI cable did not work, second worked. Be sure and keep the red line toward the front of the sampler connected to the main board and at the bottom when connected to the card reader. (see pic)

Formatting via the emu worked perfect. I used a Sandisk 4GB 30mb/sec card.

One werid thig is that the card reader shows up as several drives. Is this normal?

I tested everything out and it works saving samples to the card on the computer and then moving over to the EMU, loading the samples one by one saving a bank and then you can take this and save it on the computer. Is there any way to bulk load samples from one folder? A long time ago I used chicken systems translator, I wonder if this can create banks with samples pre loaded to save time? Any workflow tips to speed things up would be nice.

I finally got this working by setting the card reader jumpers to have a scsi id of 0 with termination on.

It was set to scsi id of 2 with termination on. Have no idea why this worked, but now there is only one drive that shows up and everything appears to be normal.

The red line of the SCSI-cable has always be connected to PIN 1 of the connector on the mainboard (take a look at the writings on the mainboard around the connector) and to PIN 1 of the SCSI-device. PIN 1 at the SCSI-device is always next to the power supply connector.

In contrast to anything you can read about SCSI-bus, SCSI-devices and termination, the termination on the PCD-50B has to be set - no matter where it is located in the SCSI-chain. I think you have to use an external terminator on the SCSI-Port of your E4, too.
The mirrors of your SCSI-device might be "reflections" on the SCSI-bus due to the missing terminator.

Recommendations for workflow-improvement ... for PC-users, only:
Get Emulator X3 at ebay or dv247.com. Then you can create the banks including bulk load of samples (drag & drop) with Emulator X3 and export the file as .E4B-bank and (thanks to FAT32-support) transfer it via your cardreader into your E4.

I tried one of these PCD-50 card readers on my E5K Ultra and had a boot up issue.

The CF card that I used was from the computer and was already FAT formatted, BUT I have an internal IDE drive in the E5K that is FAT formatted.
I'm guessing you can't have two FAT drives connected at the same time? Or maybe I stuffed something else up like ID numbers/termination (don't think I did).

I recently done a video for this if it helps anyone...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsTN-VUKwJ0

stoutjunk2 wrote:Ok, got the card reader and installed it without to much hassel (had to change scsi ID to 2). My first SCSI cable did not work, second worked. Be sure and keep the red line toward the front of the sampler connected to the main board and at the bottom when connected to the card reader. (see pic)

Formatting via the emu worked perfect. I used a Sandisk 4GB 30mb/sec card.

One werid thig is that the card reader shows up as several drives. Is this normal?

I tested everything out and it works saving samples to the card on the computer and then moving over to the EMU, loading the samples one by one saving a bank and then you can take this and save it on the computer. Is there any way to bulk load samples from one folder? A long time ago I used chicken systems translator, I wonder if this can create banks with samples pre loaded to save time? Any workflow tips to speed things up would be nice.

it only shows up multiple drives as the reader has a few card slots.... It is really just one drive they are all the same and you can access the main drive through any of them folders.. I was confused with this at 1st...

Check if the internal terminator of EOS is set to ON.
Check also if the termination of the SCSI cardreader is set.
Also use an external terminator on the SCSI port of the E4.

You should see just one SCSI drive if the SCSI cardreader is the only SCSI device in the chain.

If you read the information about the PCD-50B you should know that every slot of the cardreader has an individual Logial Unit Number (LUN). You should also know that most of the samplers, respectively the installed OS, cannot handle LUNs ... AND that EOS is one of these OSs that cannot handle LUNs.
Therefore you have to use the PCMCIA-slot with an PCMCIA-2-CF adapter as it is accessible via LUN0. You cannot access any of the other slots.

Thanks for this great post, very helpful. I have a quick question that may have been covered already but wanted to be sure.

I finally got round to upgrading to eos 4.7 the other day and was about to replace the floppy drive with a pdc-50b card reader when I realised I cannot power both the pdc-50b and my existing internal ide harddrive with the cables I currently have in my emu e4xt ultra.

So I'm thinking of purchasing this:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/170935442518

But before doing so I wanted to double check whether it's ok to power both the ide hd and card reader from the same molex power cable (i believe my ide hd needs 12v and the card reader 5v and there is a word of warning from mosrob about this above!)? From what I understand about the switched polarity, the existing cable in my emu has already had it's polarity switched. So if using the cable from ebay as a splitter with the existing cable I don't need to worry about switching polarity and can use it "straight out of the box" as it comes?

Also, the scsi cable I will use to connect the card reader is way too long. It's designed to have multiple drives attached (up to 3 by the looks of it). Is it ok to just cut off with scissors what I don't need (just after the 2nd 50 pin socket for example)? Sorry these are very basic electronics questions but just need to check I'm going about everything the right way? I'd hate to fry anything due to a stupid mistake!

@morrisj:

Regarding the Y-adapter for connecting both drives to the same power cable:
Yes, this will work.
As you already mentioned: "...the existing cable in my emu has already had it's polarity switched."
The only thing would keep in mind is, that the electrical load on the 12V and 5V lines is higher than with an IDE-drive and the floppy drive.
After removing the floppy drive you have to set a jumper on PIN 33 & 34 on the floppy connector (-> drive READY), else EOS will need a long time for booting up.

Regarding the SCSI ribbon cable:
Yes, you can cut it down.
But you have to use the connectors at the end of the ribbon cable to avoid reflections on the SCSI-bus.