[sdiy] USB,SCSI,MIDI

[Ben Lincoln]

You can definitely buy new SCSI hard drives (although they might be 
*too* new - either in terms of the size or the interface, depending on 
how picky your gear is), as it was the interface of choice for server 
hardware up until about two years ago when SAS started taking over.

I would recommend again taking a look at a SCSI <-> CF adapter as 
opposed to USB. My thinking is that USB is a general-purpose interface 
like SCSI is, so finding a device that will do a good job of making a 
USB storage device look like a SCSI hard drive is going to be difficult 
or impossible. On the other hand, if you go for a drive-specific 
interface like CF (or IDE), you can almost certainly find something that 
will work. Plus, if you're storing things on CF cards it should be very 
easy to back them up by putting them in a card reader on your PC and 
making a disk image.

To answer Achim's question, I haven't worked with any yet myself - the 
projects on my list that would involve them are so far *down* the list 
that I might never get to them - but I did see a few options poking 
around online. There seem to be two main caveats - the synchronous mode 
that Colin mentioned, and also some seem to be read-only.

bill bigrig wrote:
>  Mainly, I want to know if i can take a SCSI device
> Akai 5000, or Roland VS-2480-cd, and use USB storage.
> Or is it better to try finding SCSI hard drives used?
> Can they be bought new? Not to mention the cable
> issue(large/small) I have a CD-ROM for the Akai 5000
> to run my Mellotron sounds. That's all I've done. but
> if I collect samples  and load them in, go to all the
> trouble of keyboard mapping sound effects etc. Can it
> be converted over to USB or should I just fish for
> SCSI drives and cables.
>