emusonacid!

I have read in this forum that any EMU Ultra ( mine is a E 5000 model ) with EOS 4.7 installed can read FAT ZIP disks and swapping files from PC to sampler should work with some restrictions.

I have not tried ZIP disks here, because I do not have such a drive as SCSI model at hand now.
I am using an external SCSI MO-drive, 1.3 GB type, from Fujitsu as backup drive for my samples. This works perfect, the MO-drive is silent, fast and reliable.

Problem is:
I can not exchange disks now with my PC ( windows XP Sp3 installed ).
My sampler has EOS 4.7 installed, this OS can read FAT32 media, or it should be able to ....

I have another MO-drive, same model connected to the PC via SCSI cable, PC has internal PCI -SCSI-controller card installed with ASPI-drivers.
The sampler is not connected to my PC via SCSI cable now, and I cannot arrange this now, as the SCSI-chain is in use with another device.
And I do not want it, because Windows can delete the sampler harddrive, if it

No matter how I format the MO-disk on PC or on the EMU, the other side always says "NO" at the moment.
When the MO-disk is in EMU-format, PC won't see it, that is clear, but chickensys translator will not recognize the disk + contents too, and that is weird. The translator software will see any EMU-sampler CD-rom and
browse the files + copy them to PC. The translator sees the MO-drive with drive letter + model information, but refuses to open or view the contents - there comes no specific error message.

When I format the MO disk on the EMU in FAT-format, the PC also will not recognize it, Windows still only offers to format the "unknown disk" then.
But EMU screen clearly says disk is formatted in FAT32, I tried with 1.3 GB MO-disks. I also tried with smaller 640MB
MO-disks.
When I use the smaller 640 MB disks, EMU formats them in FAT16 format automatically, the larger 1.3 GB disks get the FAT32 format. But my PC will not show any of these disks.
When I format the disk on my PC in FAT (Fat16) or FAT32 format, the EMU sees that it is an FAT disk, but shows nonsense information like 151MB of 151MB in use, when only 1MB data is on the disk.
And the Emu can not save any files to such an disk + cannot read anything from it too.
The write protection switch on the MO-disks is not activated.

- Has anyone used an MO-drive successfully to exchange samples between PC and EMU-sampler ?
- If Yes which model of drive was used and which size of MO-disks ?
- Does file transfer / sample export really work with ZIP-drives, or even with JAZ drives 1GB or 2Gb models ?
- This would be a possibility too for me , because somewhere in my attic I still should have an old JAZ drive SCSI-model ..

Thanks in advance, I am out of my wits here now and would appreciate some help !

Volker

No probs here with zip or jaz
You seem to be doing everything correctly to do a transfer.....?
Have you tried using the pc to format the drive then creating a folder with a few wavs in it, followed by connecting the drive to the emu in order to see wether the emu sees the data?
It could be possible that eos 4.7 has not installed correctly. You could try rolling back a level and then reinstalling eos 4.7, but caution with this as some posts here warn that the eprom does not like too much wipeing and rewritting.
good luck

Thank You Jahfunk for your tips.
- I have not tried to put WAV files onto the MO disk, all the time I have tried with EMU Banks in EOS format "*.E4B" .
The sampler would show any folders on an PC disk only with an question mark underneath, although each folder
had only an 4 letter name with standard alphabet letters.
This only happened once, when the MO was formatted by the PC.
EOS could not open or view any folder or contents then. I tried to put all files in the root folder of the MO-disk, but this did not work too.
Will have to try with some *.wav files 16bit/44kHz.

It is good to read that ZIP and JAZ drives should work here.
Probably I will hunt down this alternative.

If really nobody else here does use an MO-drive to swap samples with an PC, I will give up on this too.

This does not make the Mo-drive useless, it is still a very good backup alternative for me.
I can even recommend it as an replacement for an internal harddisk - It is nearly silent, it is fast, and disk space can easily be extended just with an new disk.
It is just a bit difficult nowadays to buy any MO-disks and drives in good shape for a convenient price even on "Epay".

Thanks for the Rollback suggestion :
But right now, I really do not want to re-install the EOS, as the procedure to install the latest OS was really a bit enerving. If i remember correctly, I had to take two steps, because an really older EOS version was originally on the machine,
which could not directly be upgraded. The whole procedure was tricky and very annoying, and I am really not a person who says this easily and how knows a bit more about computers than average people.
I just want to avoid any major hardware breakdown or loss of data, and this can happen if the OS-update goes wrong.

Volker

Zip discs formated in fat will allow all data to be read by pc/emu

For fast transfers I used a usb powered zip drive connected to the pc while my scsi drive is connected to the E-mu.

Doing it this way means a powerdown to swap data is not necessary.

A powerdown would otherwise be needed if using only one zip drive (If you unplug the cable when the machines are live you take the risk of frying a device).

I use the 250mb zip drive because of the improved data read/write speed and larger storage compared to the 100mb ones. I feel they are worth paying that bit more for, but they can fetch a premium.

There is one going on ebay currently at £10.20 inc p&p ...link http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Emu-Sampler-ESI4000-SCSI-Iomega-Ext-Zip-drive-250mb-/260784032988?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Pro_Audio_Samplers_Accessories_CV&hash=item3cb7f08cdc

I would also recommend reading my thread on installing a brand new laptop ide drive rather than using the MO drive, as 120 GB is far more long term and secure than the 1.3 GB MO drive, and as you say

It is just a bit difficult nowadays to buy any MO-disks and drives in good shape

this means you risk a corrupted disc with a loss of 100s of hours worth of work/play

.....IDE installation link http://www.emusonacid.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3733

Thanks again for the tips here.

I will try to buy an external 250MB SCSI-ZIP drive now, I already have an external USB 250MB model and several disks here.

For internal harddrive options, I already have installed the "luxury" sollution here.
Thanks to technical informations in this forum and another Yahoo Yamaha A-sampler forum I purchased several expansion options.
In my Emu I have an internal SCSI/IDE converter from Acard combined with an IDE/CF card reader with an 8 GB CF card, which works silently and well.
I do not need more than 8 GB Sample space right now here. Maybe this will be different in some years, but I do doubt it.

I have bookmarked the Ebay auction, will look for other drives now too

Thanks, Volker

Thanks to all hints and tips here !

Now I finally was able to get hold of an old 2GB JAZ SCSI drive, I already had another second model here. Yesterday I was able to copy some banks in EOS 4 format *.E4B from my PC to the disk.
And my Emu could read the banks and import the samples + sounds. It also works now in the other direction, I can copy banks to the disk and read them with my PC.

I was not the luckiest person when trying out this method, because I originally had 2 JAZ drives from Ebay, and the first model only worked for some minutes, and then would not spin up at all,
and in the end it even would not eject the JAZ disk anymore.
I opened it up and found that a small plastic-pin had broken off, which was mounted on a small gear-wheel which normally pulled the spindle motor up and down.
The whole technology inside the drive seemed very fragile.
But it has to be said that I have one JAZ drive which is in use for about nearly ten years and still works - I only use it occasionally for some backups.
Personally I still find the MO-technology the most reliable, it is a shame that it is not compatible here. It works with both devices ( PC OR sampler ) but not as sampler data exchange media.

ZIP-disks are also not bad, even if many people out there now will cry out because of bad experiences with this media.
In my eyes Zips are more robust than JAZ-disks, the whole JAZ thing is very susceptible to dust and dirt, and magnetic fields also can easily damage the disks. Zips are also magnetic media,
but they suffer less from sector damage or total data loss. Best thing of course is still to always have 2 complete backups on two separate devices and media, but this is time consuming.

Just wanted to inform all others observing this thread

Volker