Future of removeable storage for samplers

[ketone]

Not sure if anyone has thought of this, but recently I decided to go and buy another SCSI Iomega Zip drive for my new E-MU Sampler.

 

To my amazement im told Iomega no longer manufacture SCSI Zip drives.....only IDE.

 

Considering my K2500 has SCSI ports (tho pretty dated SCSI-1) the E-MU has SCSI-2, the Akai's have SCSI , well in fact every sampler has SCSI for storage....If we can no longer buy SCSI Zip drives, and (trust me there is no-one i know that hasnt got a Zip drive connected to their sampler) what will we do for removable storage for our samplers?

 

The great thing about the Zip is that we can all turn up at anyones studio with a Zip full of samples an load up into anyones machine either directly with program/sample data or via Zip connected to the Mac an SCSI across to the sampler via Peak for audio samples.

 

There is no Firewire on any Sampler. Att the slowassed rate the sampler manufacturers move we are not likely to see FW within the next 5 years.

 

Anyone here have any ideas as to what we are going to have to do for external storage?

 

As a side note..i came into a bit of greif the other day configuring a freinds new E-MU E6400 to his existing S2000 Akai and Pre G3 Mac.

 

I thought the E-MU had dual SCSI ports..I found only 1. I found no way to run these devices an a Zip drive on the same SCSI bus. The best i could do was ..EXT SCSI port on Mac to the Zip, the thru port on the Zip to the E-MU..because there is only 1 port on both the E-MU and the Akai i could not connect both samplers on the same bus.....

 

I spun out in annoyance...so i decided to call the local Emu distributor, i thought they may have an additional SCSI port option..bahaha no such thing according to them. So now we have to make do with having these samplers on different SCSI busses.

Now the prollem we have is we can use the Zip drive for both samplers..argh this is crazee....All SCSI devices by LAW should have 2 ports.

 

Perhaps there is some kinds external SCSI port splitter connector????

 

Anyways thats my hoohar for the day.

 

Have a nice weekend

 

Ketone

[Anderton]

>>To my amazement im told Iomega no longer manufacture SCSI Zip drives.....only IDE.<<

 

In the latest MacWarehouse catalog, they list a 250 MB ZIP drive with a SCSI interface. I believe it is backward compatible with the older disks.

 

It makes sense to me that the 100 MB jobs are now IDE only. Since they were invented, 100 MB has gone from a lot of storage to just enough for one or two multimedia files. It's more like a floppy, hardly worth the trouble to connect externally.

 

The other option, of course, is to buy a Huge Honkin SCSI Hard Drive with, like, 60 GB of storage. That's enough for 600 ZIP disks, which is quite a large sample collection! And you can always hook the hard drive into any compatible sampler.

 

I'm not sure what the answer will be when all these lovely instruments can no longer be supported technologically. Bummer, dude.

[Jan Folkson]

Hey Ketone,

 

I had a similar problem recently when I got a 3rd Roland sampler. I needed to connect them all to one cd/jaz combo. Jumped in the car down to my local Micro Center and picked up a Centronics add-a-port scsi cable. Basically a 50 pin SCSI male-male cable with a female 50 pin grafted on. You could probably rig something up with 25-50 pin adaptors. I don't recall who the manufacturer is, AESP or Interex comes to mind. You may want to look into their respective web sites.

 

Alternately, Glyph makes or used to make a hardware SCSI switcher for just such an application. Where a few initiators can share several drives. Their web site didn't show it, a phone call might work.

 

HTH.

 

- Jan

[DBENNVAhotmail.com]

Peeps,

 

Glyph does make them, & they do work. We have two of them(SCSI Switchers).

 

Quantum!, & Camp C/O

DBENNVA@hotmail.com