[sdiy] Ensoniq ASR-X weirdness

[Michael Taylor]

The Akai SCSI fuse issue was due to them not putting a resettable fuse in
the SCSI chain. What would happen is people would hot swap SCSI
drives(which is a no-no)and blow the fuse.

>From what I understand, the fuse issue doesn't apply to Zip drives because
they don't use active termination.

I had this issue with an MPC3000 and it would not recognize a SCSI to CF
drive. As soon as I swapped out the fuse it worked perfectly.

If the ASR can see and access the drive(even if only for 1.2% of a format)
it might not be the fuse.

My gut reaction to this issue is to cut to the chase and get a CF solution
from RaizinMonster or Lotharek. I'm really not comfortable trusting any
data to a budget storage format that was questionable when it was new 15
years ago.



On Wednesday, December 2, 2015, ChristianH <chris at chrismusic.de> wrote:

> This reminds me of a problem that had been reported back in the late 90s
> on the AKAI mailing list. The AKAI samplers (I think S2000, but possibly
> others too) appear to have a fuse for termination power, which sometimes
> blows.
>
> I never had that problem myself, but reading "software setting" reminded
> me of that situation - it might well be that the software setting does
> not behave as intended because of something like that.
>
> If you have enough old SCSI stuff around, you may try putting the
> sampler *not* at the end of the chain, but use an additional external
> device (or one of those chunky terminator plugs) for termination.
> But, if the Ensoniq is like the AKAIs, this won't work. The AKAI has
> only one SCSI connector (and that's not even a real one, but a SUB-D 25
> instead), so that would require tinkering with a T-cable. No fun with
> SCSI, not to mention that reflections will be pretty uncontrollable. And
> termination is about reflections (or the lack of), after all...
>
> Chris
>
>
>
> On Wed, 2 Dec 2015 10:10:31 -0500 Travis Thatcher <recompas at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>>
> wrote:
>
> > Thanks Brian,
> >
> > Yeah its been quite some time since I had my MPC SCSI setup...like 16
> > years? The ASR-X does have internal termination and the zip drives
> > I've tested also have a switch on the back for termination on that end
> > as well. I'm just going with the sampler and drive so no intermediate
> > devices. My guess is that the ASR isn't actually terminating properly
> > - it is a software setting that seems to be set correctly.
> > Unfortunately the ASR doesn't have a second scsi port so I can just
> > stick on a terminator. I might try to open it up and test if the
> > actual termination is happening on the Ensoniq end. I'm also going to
> > try to stick a terminated scsi cd rom at the end of the chain tonight
> > to see if that helps.
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 1:11 AM,  <rsdio at audiobanshee.com <javascript:;>>
> wrote:
> > > I forgot to mention that Ensoniq did not strictly use DOS formatting,
> at least not for the EPS. You can sometimes read an ENSONIQ floppy from
> DOS, but there is one extra sector per track, so the disk holds more data.
> Also, the format is entirely unlike DOS, so you need a special program to
> read the data.
> > >
> > > I wrote such a program for my NeXT Computer back in the days when my
> EPS saw daily use. That allowed any SCSI device (hard drive, floppy, Zip,
> etc) to be read in the Ensoniq format, and allowed transferring files
> between Ensoniq and other devices. But you can't read an EPS disk with
> standard formatting.
> > >
> > > I suspect that you have SCSI termination issues. Once you solve those,
> you should be able to format a disk so that the ASR-X can read it. If you
> get the Chicken Head software that others have mentioned, this should allow
> you to read Ensoniq disks from your PC.
> > >
> > > Brian
> > >
> > >
> > > On Dec 1, 2015, at 5:58 PM, Travis Thatcher <recompas at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > >> I've got a terminator and a scsi cd drive I can try on the end of the
> > >> chain tomorrow. I think it is weird that even if I insert a brand new
> > >> pc formatted zip disk the status still says 'Unreadable'. I thought
> > >> the ASR-X used DOS formatting... I may just give up in the end and get
> > >> an sd floppy emulator. I don't plan on putting huge samples on this
> > >> thing but it'd be nice to have the larger storage option.
> > >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > http://www.travisthatcher.com
> > http://www.soundcloud.com/thevoiceofsaturn
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