I was trolling on eBay and came across this unusual device that emulates 720K floppy drives to a USB stick. I'm thinking of trying one on my Emax and was curious if anyone had any experience with it. Here it is:

3.5“ 720K USB SSD Floppy Drive Emulator For Yamaha KORG ROLAND Electronic Organ | eBay

These are almost commoditized now. I'm not certain they support DD 720k format so I would confirm this. I got an hxc converter for my ensoniq eps and it's great. With hxc there is no 99 disk limit. You can have as many disks as you can fit on a partition your device can read. Having said that you could just shuttle USB keys.

I prolly should have read the add instead of looking at the picture. There is still a need to check compatibility though as believe it or not there are different types of dd drives. My ensoniq was a drive type that hasn't been made in years.

This price seems high to me as well. I think I've seen these for as low as 40.

And how. It was a lot of work, time and effort to get the hxc working with the unusual 720k floppy format used on the SQ-80 - itself very different from the EPS and VFX series. Oh why Ensoniq, why? :-)

Fortunately the great thing about the hxc is that you can talk directly with the designer and together you can work out the problem from both ends. THAT, my friends is tech support with a capital T.




Sent from my Nexus 7

I recently bought one of the "Gotek" 720k usb floppy emulators for use with my EPS. It appears the emulator will only work with actual 720k DOS-based floppy types, so stuff like the EPS, Sony samplers, etc, are out (format to 800k or something weird). I'm away from most of my other gear, but I'm going to try it out with my MPC60II and Roland S-550. I'm pretty sure it'll flop, but we'll see.

I'll look into the HxC adapter for the future.

it works with the mpc60

I just want to state, for the record, that the Gotek 720K floppy drive emulator DOES NOT work with MPC60II with OS 2.12. It sees the files, but can do nothing with them.

It looks like I'll be needing that 3.10 update now...

Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Wrong jumper settings?

you guys might want to check out the HxC stuff. I have one in my my EPS 16 plus and its great.

HxC is definitely the way to go, but I didn't (still don't) have the cash for one when I needed to get a floppy emulator.

As I look around me, I see five devices that will ultimately need floppy drives replaced. Those HxC drives will add up fast. Yikes.

hi guys. do you know what sd/usb/floppy emulator options there are for the s950 that don't require any mods/soldering?
i've never soldered anything before, so a simple installation would be preferred.

I have two of the original models which aren't in the floppy form factor. I'd recommend getting the rev C model which is the floppy form factor you just slide it in and hook up the ribbon and power cables. If you are interested in the 2 I have make an offer via PM. again I'd probably go with the rev C models instead of the 2 original models I have.

ymmv?

are there any cheaper alternatives that work with the s950 at all guys (with read/write support and so i won't need to do any modding)?

when buying a hxc drive tell em its for the s950 i think you can get them to send you a drive already modded.....confirm b4hand

Naw man, the modification is done on the board of the s-950. Simply add a resistor to R18 on the second board. You don't even need to take the old one off. I'm very new to soldering and was able to accomplish this.

I just put the HxC in my sp1200, Emax and S-950 last week. It's very worth it.

I want one for my Emax. It sounds like the perfect solution. Was it difficult to get it to work?

Not really. I pissfarted around installing mine and couldn't get it to work. Then I read the manual and it was all good within minutes.

Not difficult getting it to work at all. The hardest part is finding an elegant way to fill the empty space in the floppy bay because its a bit taller and not as wide.

This is what I've done for now. Luckily I have access to Sintra and a router at my place of employment. I would be interested to see what other people have done.

fair enough....i was only going on Jeffs reply here....

Akai MPC Forums - s950 floppy drive problem : MPC Studio Environments

Of course the HxC Floppy Emulator works with the S950, there are several people using it on the S950...
(one example : MPCHunter ... -emulator/ )
"lot of technical mods" is a little over acting here .
The only mod to do it to add a 2.2k resistors on the data line. The Rev F HxC Floppy emulator have the footprint on the PCB to make this easily.
You can also ask Lotharek to add it directly.

I read/thought the same exact thing and even asked Lotharek to do it for me. After no response, I did further research. He probably thought I was crazy.

it actually says on his ebay auction for that item that he'll add it.

"Q: hi there, is it possible to buy one of these that is set up and ready to work straight away on a Akai S950 sampler? I don't want to buy then have a nightmare with firmware and having to take out of my sampler a load of times. is that possible? 05-Nov-12

A: hello i get many question like that, so i changed mind - Yes, it is adding one resistor - it must be mentioned in PAYPAL PAYMENT TAB, otherwise i will not remember. Thank You"

. Oops

I stand corrected! I suppose it could be done either way then. Seems he gave in to demand. I asked prior to Nov 12. I'm sure he'll move more units this way. No body want to solder on a circuit board if they don't have to.

If that's the case, then what are you waiting on? I highly recommend this product.

bump

anyone using the Gotek in their S950's?

i dont think gotek will work in s950
it only works in mpc60 when you have the Roger Linn o.s. installed - without this os, it doesnt work in the mpc60

thanks bro - looks like there is a few versions of it being sold - the 'FU' versions seems to work best for people.

seems unlikely it will work in S950, but asking a few owners about it.

For those lurking around this thread as I was. I've got an MPC 60 MkII running 2.12 and didn't think it made sense that these floppy emulators wouldn't work on 2.12 but were fine on 3.10. I ordered a Gotek SFRM72-FU-DL on eBay and is working just fine for me. I'll post a video.

I've considered HxC in the past for if I acquire an Emulator I, and possibly for my recently-acquired Emax II as well. The problem is that I'm inexperienced with tampering with hardware configurations: the most I've done successfully is replace a battery for a since-sold Roland JV2080. How difficult is it to install an HxC emulator? Does this Gotek solution involve a similar procedure?

I just got the HxC and and sold it a month later. That thing caused me so much annoyance. Made me appreciate that good old floppy technology on my emu sampler. Floppy is so much more easy to handle and if you store them carefully they last for a long time. The HxC is so bloody complicated to get to work. The workflow as a whole just pissed me off. And dont expect to get a helpful support from HxC either in case you get stuck ..and there's a high probability that you will. By the way, I'm everything but a IT noob.

Once I got it to work and only by the means of ready made HxC disc's that I downloaded from their website I encountered a very disturbing effect. I spend about a whole week to re-create my library on a smart card. Later I discovered that nearly all of the HxC discs samples contained a sonic artefact that made all my work obsolete. At that point I sold it and never looked back...now I'm back in business with my good old floppy discs and I'm happy.

Boom!

I just got the SFRM72-FU-DL working with a Roland W30 that I was fixing up for a friend. I looked into getting the HXC or Lotharek, but due to pricing decided to take a $20 gamble on this floppy USB and amazingly it works great. I definitely had to try a few different things to get it to work, but once you can decipher the manual's "Engrish" it starts to make sense how the unit works and what each jumper on the back does.

Should be usable for any keyboard that has a shugart style disk drive and uses 720K disks. There's other models for 1.44, etc, but this one only does 720K as the model name suggests.