Emax

After reading up on their card reader I've come to the conclusion that as more of us install CF readers (either externally or internally) in our Emax IIs, a chart would be in order to confirm compatibility of the actual CF cards we have tried with each setup.

Also, it would be nice to find the circuit or logic chip that determines any hot-swappability of the drives.  If the floppy can be hot-swappable, I don't see why we couldn't find a way of at least tricking the samplers to allow us to change cards while the unit is on.  The first idea that comes to mind for me is a momentary DPDT switch that kills the power to the reader, that you would hold down while you changed cards, and when released the reader would power back on.  I would hope that we could leave the drive select on that drive, but maybe we would have to change drives momentarily, power the reader off, switch cards, and release the button, then change back to the CF drive with drive select.

If something this simple were possible, then we could at least save a huge step of transferring the bank to a HDD or ZIP, having to power off the unit, change cards, and power back on to be able to shuffle samples between CF cards instead of always having to use EMXP.

I was also thinking of having two CF readers, but the ultimate result would be the same, having to power down the units entirely to be able to change even the first CF card...

Any ideas out there why a floppy (0) can hot swap and not SCSI 1-6?



--- In emax@yahoogroups.com, "s*" <scartattack@...> wrote:
>
> I picked up a CF card reader from SCSIforSamplers.com:
> 
> http://www.scsiforsamplers.com/cfcard.asp
> 
> I own 2 Emax II's (1 x 8mb Rack and 1 x 1mb Keyboard) and an e6400 (128mb).
> 
> I couldn't afford 3 card readers at the moment but, I do have a few SCSI
> enclosures that I wasn't using so, I decided I would buy one card reader and
> install it in the enclosure myself.  JD at SCSIforSamplers was very helpful
> and answered all my questions very quickly.  After the card reader was
> installed, I had a few problems formatting the CF card on the Emax II but,
> soon came to the conclusion that it must be the card itself.  After digging
> through the Emax archives a bit I noticed that a few of you mentioned that
> the CF card needed to be somewhat specific.  Since the original Emax II HD
> is 540mb's, I figured I would need to find a smaller card (although finding
> cards under 1GB is not that easy these days unless you go online to find
> them).  I ended up going to several computer stores in Toronto and was
> laughed at by most computer store employees because they could not
> understand why i would be searching for something so obsolete.  I finally
> found 1 place that had a 128MB Apacer CF card.  The guy sold it to me for $5
> tax in.  Later that day I found a few 512MB generic cards for $5 a piece as
> well (although I knew they probably would not work).  All the cards I have
> seem to work fine on the e6400 but not the Emax II.  Only the Apacer 128mb
> seems to format/read/write OK.  I have a friend bringing me a 512mb SanDisk
> to work tomorrow.  My goal was to create Emax II format cards as the e6400
> can also read this format.  Now what I have done is connected the card
> reader to a DB25 switch box and I can now create Emax II samples and flip
> the switch and load them into either the e6400 or the other Emax II.  I also
> have HD's in each of the machines and a Zip drive in the mix (although I
> have had my share of HD's and Zips die over the years so, I think the more
> backup I can have the better (and the CF card is silent which is another
> bonus!)).  As well, I have card readers for both my Mac and PC so the next
> step I guess is to dump some of my Emax archives onto the card using EMXP.
> 
> So far my opinion of the Card Reader is that it is totally worth the money.
> The real tricky part is finding the compatible media for them!
> 
> -s*
> 
> 
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>