Emax

get ready for a long post...

i was hoping make this post one where i had success in installing the
card reader and thanked all the past users for all the information
i've learned about the emax and putting such a thing into my "new" toy...

but so far i've been pretty dead in the water with this project.  i'm
hoping that posting up what i've done for people to see will
eventually lead to some answers from folks in the group.  my ultimate
goal is to ditch the floppy and LOUD hd, to solely rely on the card
reader so i can take this baby out to gigs, without fear of killing
the moving parts.

i have an emax hd running the 1.1 OS.  

first order of business was to get a scsi card reader, but i wasn't
willing to pay $140 for it just yet.  thanks to ebay, i managed to
score an SCM PCD-15B off ebay for cheap, which i know folks have been
using in MPCs and some other samplers, so i'm hoping there was no
compatibility problems there.  the pcd-15b is a two-slot reader.

i also bought an old SCSI card for the PC, just to make sure that the
jumper settings on the pcd-15b could get me to SCSI ID 0.  the pcd-15b
has only 3 sets of jumpers (as opposed to 4 on the pcd-47b).  i found
out through trial and error that no jumpers = SCSI ID 0 for slot A.

i removed the HD, plugged in the pcd-15b, and booted from floppy. 
with a pcmcia adapter/SD card in the pcd-15b, the emax would load the
software from floppy and then hang at the "Just a moment" screen. 
however, if i booted without the pcmcia card in the reader, i managed
to have the OS load from floppy.  

ok, so with the OS loaded and emax on, i put in my pcmcia card and
tell the emax to format hd.  lo and behold, it works! i also have it
copy the OS over, which it does (very fast i might add).  so things
are looking good.

now comes the test: i power down the emax, take out the floppy, and
try to boot from the pcmcia card.  i get past diagnostics, but the
emax hangs at "just a moment".  no good.  i try booting from floppy
with the pcmcia card in the reader, and get the same result as before
-- it hangs on "just a moment".

i decide that i should eliminate the chance that maybe it's a
limitation due to me running 1.1 OS.  so next order of business:
upgrade my emax with the SE upgrade, and move on to the Plus OS.

i buy some 800kb diskettes, format them in my emax, and boot my pc
into DOS 6.2. since i run my pc solely on SATA drives, DOS wasn't
seeing the FAT partition i created.  however, it did see my USB flash
drive i had plugged in, so that's where i copied the necessary files to. 

i used emaxutil to make the upgrade diskette, and pop it into my emax.
 DISK ERROR.  i try re-fromatting my diskette and re-making the SE
upgrade diskette a few times before i finally gave up.

ok so now i'm stuck.  i'm open to any suggestions on the above, but
here are a couple thoughts:

-maybe the USB to floppy thing isn't a good idea to make the SE
upgrade disk, so i'm going to find a spare IDE drive to format into
FAT and copy my files to.  hopefully this will result in a usable
upgrade disk.

- maybe ditch the pcd-15b? i guess i can save up $140 for a card
reader... :(

if you've made it this far, thanks for reading.  hopefully soon i can
share a success story.

rex