Akai S6000 - HELP!!

[Guido3]

I have just picked up a cheap Akai S6000 to play around with and to fill 4U in my rack!!!!

The internal SCSI hard-drive is not behaving. There is a good sized library on board so I would like to access it or at least get it onto something a bit more bullet-proof as the SCSI drive is not good.

Has anyone had similar problems? The drive powers up OK but doesn't spin up. I've opened up the S6000 and uninstalled and re-installed the drive. It worked for a short while but has now stopped working again.

I'm prepared to spend a bit of time trying to sort but ultimately, if it's going to prove to be a PITA, I'm going to sell the sampler for parts as I'll probably turn a few quid by selling the USB/EFX/64 Voice board etc...... separately.

I would like to keep hold of it though but need some internal storage options if the SCSI drive is foobard!!!

Thoughts?

[fatbenelton]

Other than th drive does it work ok or not boot? If the latter the drive may be interrupting the boot; I had the same issue with my mpc4000. Remove the drive totally and check….

[Guido3]

Hi - It boots fine when I disconnect the SCSI drive. The S6000 works fine when it's not connected.

[DGL.]

The only suggestion I could give would be to take the HDD out and connect it to a computer somehow, the format is standard pc FAT 32? so any computer can read it with an appropriate SCSI card and see if it works out of the S6000.
You wouldn't need a fancy computer to do it just something with a free PCI slot or an old laptop and a PCMCIA SCSI card.

[Guido3]

The only suggestion I could give would be to take the HDD out and connect it to a computer somehow, the format is standard pc FAT 32? so any computer can read it with an appropriate SCSI card and see if it works out of the S6000.
You wouldn't need a fancy computer to do it just something with a free PCI slot or an old laptop and a PCMCIA SCSI card.

I don't have a PC in the house!!! I'll see if I can find someone at work to help out.

[OneWorld]

If you get access to a pc but don’t have a scsi card I still have one, the adapter 2490 (I might have the name wrong) but it is a sort of standard scsi card you can have it if you want

[BigRedX]

Unless it changed with the later models Akai used their own propriety format for hard drives. Certainly the disks I used with my Akai S2000 were unreadable by anything else.

[Folderol]

Unless it changed with the later models Akai used their own propriety format for hard drives. Certainly the disks I used with my Akai S2000 were unreadable by anything else.

If that's the case, the best place for it is the skip.
{cough} in my humble opinion {cough}

[ken long]

Unless it changed with the later models Akai used their own propriety format for hard drives. Certainly the disks I used with my Akai S2000 were unreadable by anything else.

Interesting. Never seen a 2000 with a hard drive - didn't even think they came with SCSI.

PCM WAV was adopted for the 5000/6000 so there shouldn't be any issue migrating the data. There is software that will convert .snd to .wav though...

[FrankF]

I would:

- get hold of another scsi drive and see if it works in the AKAI (Ebay has scsi drives starting at around a tenner - check the pincount to avoid cable adapter hassles!)
- as mentioned above, get an adaptec scsi card and test the "faulty" drive on someone's pc. I use WG Data Lifeguard to test all my SCSI etc. drives on an 18 year old PC. It's easy peasy, quick, and free.
https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3&&lang=en

Another reason to connect the drive to a PC is that the power distribution board in the AKAI might be faulty, so if the drive powers up via the PC...(I've replaced 2 faulty PD boards in my AKAI multitrack).

Finally, if the drive is failing but you can get it talking to a PC, you should be able to backup all the samples on it, proprietary or not, and then copy them back onto your new drive. I've done this dozens of times with AKAI project files that contain .cue, .mix, and numerous other proprietary AKAI project files.

[BigRedX]

Interesting. Never seen a 2000 with a hard drive - didn't even think they came with SCSI.

PCM WAV was adopted for the 5000/6000 so there shouldn't be any issue migrating the data. There is software that will convert .snd to .wav though...

It's a long time since I had the S2000, but IIRC the SCSI interface was built-in, but required an external hard drive. I used mine with an external 3.5" MO drive.

It was also possible to use the SCSI interface to connect to a computer and transfer samples and edit programs using Akai's MESA software.

[Guido3]

Another reason to connect the drive to a PC is that the power distribution board in the AKAI might be faulty, so if the drive powers up via the PC...(I've replaced 2 faulty PD boards in my AKAI multitrack).

The power light on the drive lights up which would suggest there is power getting through. The disc just doesn't spin up.