Using a "generic" SCSI card with Triton Rack?

[BelfastGooner]

As the Triton/Rack SCSI card now costs several hundred pounds on the used market, I'm wondering if its possible to use a "generic" scsi card instead? The card and hard drive could be mounted inside the Rack case, as there's quite a bit of fresh air in there.

[rha]

Never tried it and don't know if it'll work, but it looks as if some folks have had success with SCSI to SD card adapters...

http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpbb2/ ... f573109b3a

I've briefly looked at them but they've been expensive. If they do work it would be my preference, rather than having an old and noisy SCSI hard drive!

This one seems a reasonable price:

https://store.rabbitholecomputing.com/P ... -REV-2022C

Although the chip shortage looks to be causing problems.

Good luck!

[Eddy Deegan]

I'm not 100% certain but I don't think it would work. You could almost certainly use an emulator in place of a SCSI drive but the SCSI controller is equally almost certainly going to be non-standard and the driver in the Triton Rack firmware will be expecting that card only.

Never tried it and don't know if it'll work, but it looks as if some folks have had success with SCSI to SD card adapters...

Both the links mentioned by rha are drive emulators that require an existing SCSI host to attach to, and for that you need the EXB-SCSI card itself.

The EXB-SCSI card is connected to the Triton Rack internals via a ribbon cable whereas a 'standard' SCSI controller would be expecting some form of ISA/PCI/whatever bus connector.

These days it'd make more sense to replace the floppy drive with a compatible USB emulator as a single USB stick can hold hundreds or thousands of floppy images depending on the model of emulator used.

[BelfastGooner]

These days it'd make more sense to replace the floppy drive with a compatible USB emulator as a single USB stick can hold hundreds or thousands of floppy images depending on the model of emulator used.

I picked up a floppy emulator for around £15 delivered, mostly for installing EXB-PCM data. Now, there are a couple of things I've noticed about the emulator. Firstly, it only works with usb sticks up to 2GB in size. Luckily I had an old 2GB one lying around, so that wasn't an issue.

The other thing is, and this is where things get weird, in order to use a usb stick with the emulator, you're meant to format it in the machine, by holding the 2 buttons on the front of the emulator while powering up the Triton. This creates 999 1.44mb FAT format partitions on the stick. But as no documentation came with the drive (I had to look it up online to find out how to use it properly - more of which later...) I formatted the stick as a single 2GB FAT partition on my pc. I then copied all of my EXB-PCM data onto it, in individual folders. And the Triton recognised the drive and the folders, and installed the data with no problems.

However, when I tried installing the data for the MOSS card, the Triton automatically opened each of the PCG and SNG files as folders, and wanted to install the contents as midi files. The only way around this, I learned from researching online, was to format the USB stick in the emulator and copy the files to the first 1.44mb partition (the only one recognised by the pc).

So I'm hoping that, when I start to do some sampling with the Triton, it will be able to load and save sample data from the single 2GB partitioned USB stick, and not require it to be partitioned as 1.44mb partitions. That way I will be able to save and load single samples created up to the 96mb limit. And I can only check that out when my stateside-based sister brings me home the 96mb of ram I ordered from amazon.com. So I will report back on that.

And yes, your point about the scsi drivers makes perfect sense.

[Eddy Deegan]

The other thing is, and this is where things get weird, in order to use a usb stick with the emulator, you're meant to format it in the machine, by holding the 2 buttons on the front of the emulator while powering up the Triton. This creates 999 1.44mb FAT format partitions on the stick. But as no documentation came with the drive (I had to look it up online to find out how to use it properly - more of which later...) I formatted the stick as a single 2GB FAT partition on my pc. I then copied all of my EXB-PCM data onto it, in individual folders. And the Triton recognised the drive and the folders, and installed the data with no problems.

However, when I tried installing the data for the MOSS card, the Triton automatically opened each of the PCG and SNG files as folders, and wanted to install the contents as midi files. The only way around this, I learned from researching online, was to format the USB stick in the emulator and copy the files to the first 1.44mb partition (the only one recognised by the pc).

I've been through the process of installing a USB emulator in my Trinity but I've not done it with my Triton Rack. I can't give you a definitive answer as to what's going on there but my hunch is that when the stick is formatted as a single 2GB FAT partition the Triton is able to read the FAT table which indexes all the files on the partition but will still read it as if it was a 1.44mb floppy, so it can see files it can't actually read. I seem to recall experiencing something similar myself.

I'd recommend having a read through the thread linked above as I also talk a bit about the manner in which the USB stick should be formatted. On my Trinity I tried formatting the USB stick using the built-in function on the emulator but the Trinity didn't like the results and after a lot of hunting around I found that the only way the Trinity would read the virtual floppies was to format the stick using the Ketron Virtual Floppy Explorer utilities.

That topic is a little old now and the link to the Ketron software in there doesn't work any more (I just checked) but the utility installer was called FdUsbW7_ketron.exe and it worked fine on Windows 10. I'd certainly try and track that down to see if it works with your emulator (by the sound of it, it probably will). I think this might be it actually: https://www.ketron.it/en/software-2/usb-floppy-software

Note that after formatting the stick with the Ketron software, Windows will only see the first 1.44Mb partition as you describe. Do not write files to that partition using the windows file manager though. Use the file management features in the Ketron software as this can not only see all 100 partitions but will ensure that writes to them do not corrupt the format.

One thing I've not done is save samples that span multiple floppies so I'm not completely sure how that works but AFAIK it should work as the Triton will prompt you to insert new disks as required. However, saving 96Mb of samples spanning multiple floppies is going to suck, no matter how you do it and if you really want to do that then I'd be inclined to bite the bullet, get the EXB-SCSI card and use an emulated SCSI drive with it although that too may require some experimentation even after you've got the expansion installed.

I'd also try trawling Korg forms for clues in case someone else has already done it and shared some details.

Hopefully something in the above will help but it can take patience to get things up and running! Good luck

[rha]

Ooops! Apologies for the misdirection! That's what happens when I don't read carefully...

Yes, the devices I mentioned are for emulating the drives, and will need a functioning SCSI port. Which is what the EXB-SCSI thing provides, and will be proprietary. Really should have noticed that! I hope I didn't waste your time.

When I found out about them it was in the context of older bits of gear that were set up to take a SCSI drive directly. Old hard-disk recorders, mostly. I found the cost a bit offputting and so never tried one...

Cheers,
Roscoe

[Eddy Deegan]

Yes, the devices I mentioned are for emulating the drives, and will need a functioning SCSI port.

...

When I found out about them it was in the context of older bits of gear that were set up to take a SCSI drive directly. Old hard-disk recorders, mostly. I found the cost a bit offputting and so never tried one...

No worries - your post reminded me that my Trinity has the HDR-TRI option installed and I've also got a SCSI drive emulator that takes CF cards. I bought it ages ago to try and replace the failed HD in my old Fostex D2424 but without success as the Fostex is fussy.

It'll be interesting to see if the Trinity and the SCSI drive emulator will talk to each other because if so then I'll be able to drop all my old sequencer files on the emulated SCSI drive, which is more convenient than emulated floppies, and it'll be fun to experiment with some 4-track audio recording on the Trinity as well even if only for nostalgic purposes!

[rha]

No worries - your post reminded me that my Trinity has the HDR-TRI option installed and I've also got a SCSI drive emulator that takes CF cards. I bought it ages ago to try and replace the failed HD in my old Fosted D2424 but without success as the Fostex is fussy.

Thanks! Funnily enough, it was in the context of Fostex recorders that I was looking at these things, as the old recorders go for very little these days. (I believe Air recorded most of their first album on an eight-track version.)

Unfortunately, it looks as if they used a custom filesystem to allow the recording bandwidth on to those old disks and, while interesting (sort of), as you say, it doesn't translate well, sometimes even to actual disks of the era. I think I saw a thread or video were someone got it to work, but it looked a bit of a gamble - that was also a factor in my losing interest!

[BelfastGooner]

Hopefully something in the above will help but it can take patience to get things up and running! Good luck

Hi Eddy. Thanks for your excellent and extremely informative reply.

Since I last posted, things have moved on a little. I was able to get the Ketron utility ok, although drag-n-drop seems to work ok with the Triton. My 96mb of ram arrived as well, giving me the maximum possible sample memory.

And I was able to pick up an exb-scsi card for a good price as well. I'm now looking for a suitable, cost-effective scsi solution for storing and loading samples. I was looking at a scsi cd-rom drive for loading samples. Though I'm not sure if that would work with the Triton.

The other option is an sd scsi adapter, like this one https://amigakit.amiga.store/zuluscsi-m ... 91288.html. I would like to be able to mount it internally though. Which would require a longer cable from the card to the Triton board, and a 25-pin cable for the adapter. But it seems like it would be pretty straightforward, given the abundance of space inside the Triton Rack.

[t-sun]

I finally got around to picking up a zuluscsi device for my beloved W30 this month and I couldn’t be happier with it. It is dead simple to use. Can’t recommend it enough.

Looks like you might need this one though: https://store.rabbitholecomputing.com/Z ... -2022c.htm

[jonny be good]

As the Triton/Rack SCSI card now costs several hundred pounds on the used market, I'm wondering if its possible to use a "generic" scsi card instead? The card and hard drive could be mounted inside the Rack case, as there's quite a bit of fresh air in there.

i have one for sale £150 and a yamaha cd drive and lead also for sale j

[SynthfulDwarphus]

There was a custom aftermarket board (possibly still available - shows active on mfr website) that added both a Triton SCSI interface - but *internally* - plus a hard drive emulation integrated SD card slot, and an *external* USB connector to read/write the SD card remotely from a PC (i.e without removing SD card from inside Triton. Pricey at about $270.

Incidentally, the EXB-SCSI for Triton Classic and Rack use an off-shelf Fujitsu MB86604L SCSI Protocol Controller (which is the reason above custom SCSI card could be created).