E-mu Emulator Sampler User Forum for the EIII EII EI and EIII XP

Hi, my little baby has arrived yesterday (Xp 32 megs ram no hd) and it doesn't like any disk. I formatted 5 different kinds of diskettes with Omniflop latest version, Emax 512- etc format the *.is 2.1 version os, but no luck. The drive starts making some noise, then the lcd counts scsi id numbers in sequence 1 to 7 and then from the beginning (drive noise etc). Any idea?

http://www.youtube.com/v/fZAUJyhNibI

Thanks

You say that you're using Emax 512 format OS disks? You may have formated the disks wrong; instead of formating it for EIIIxp you have formated it for Emax and that's why it can't find the operating system, keeps going on searching for it.

Thanks but that's what a post in this forum say abot formatting an EIIIxp! The image is an 800kb one and with Omniflop there's no EIIIx format. Am I wrong?
I read this: http://eiiiforum.com/index.php?topic=28.0

I checked into OmniFlop and you can actually find two format types for Emax, one with standard format 800kb and one with 1024-byte sectors 800kb. Try the the 1024-byte version if you haven't done that already. Btw, download the latest version of OmniFlop to be sure you will have all format types.
I read the thread (<-- ! :P) and maybe you're using wrong type of disk, a High Density disk and formated it as a Double Density disk, if so, you need to block the identity hole (the hole that cannot be closed) with a piece of tape to make it possible for your EIIIxp to read the disk. This might be the problem.

 ;D
floppies are ok (dd no hd) and tried everything till now (1024 format).
Well, now I think is a floppy drive issue: I mounted it on my pc and it doesn't seem to be working at all ("the drive is busy" warning) . Do you think I can transfer the floppy image on scsi HD and startup system from there?

If you can mount the SCSI HD to your PC with sucess, I guess it would be possible to transfer disk image to HD drive. Though I've never done that my self. Worth a try.

I'm waiting for a Segate... I'll let you know if this work

Ok, some news from the floppy nightmare: I can't find a way to transfer on the "new" HD (Seagate 1gb) the floppy Os2.1 EIIIxp image. Any chance to do this or, can somebody here make an Hd disk image of EIIIxp?
Thank you for your patience

I was thinking about the diskdrive, why don't you just replace it with a new 'IDE' one?
If you need to change the ID of the diskdrive (from ID1 to ID0) you can twist the conductors of the flatribbon-cable like picture below.
Twist the conductors 10, 11, and 12, the red conductor is always #1. Doing this you don't need to solder the diskdrive or anything.

Escobar, should I twist the actual EIIIxp cable and use my Pc floppy drive (a Sony) or I must buy a new Teac fd-235, mentioned on Emulatorarchive as spare part?
Thanks

You should twist the EIIIxp cable and use the Sony PC floppy drive. If you get the Teac fd-235 you don't need to twist the cable. The reason you twist the cable is to change the ID of floppy drive without need for soldering on the floppy drive itself. Floppy drives has something called Mode Select DS. 'Modern' floppy drives are 'strapped' (or you can call it 'programmed') with mode DS1 (or as I wrote ID1, it means the same thing). Older floppy drives, those find in EIII/xp, Emax, Atari, Amiga, and so forth, are strapped as DS0 or ID0. To change this drive select mode without making any physical changes to the drive you can twist the data ribbon cable for the disk drive, i.e. it's the same thing to do. If you don't like the idea of twisting the ribbon cable you have in your EIIIxp, go to a computer store and ask for a 34pin data ribbon cable special made for floppy drives, and ask if they can help you with it. Remember: the RED coloured conductor of the ribbon cable is the number one (1), then count from that till you find conductor 10, 11, and 12. Twist those three conductors so that 10, and 12 change place.

Many thanks Escobar, more news later...

Escobar you're the man!!! New floppy is now working.  ;D
ps: This tips from Escobar should be sticky.
Thanks a lot

Nice to read that it works!
I found the solution on a website about Prophet 2000 actually. I needed to repair one of it's drive too.
Good luck!

Escobar

Hi Escobar,

I got the same problem with a sony floppy.

I try this and now when the emu start he recognize the os 2.1 but still continu to search scsi device...
Do you know if I got to put terminators on the eIII or maybe somethin with the motherboard jumpers?

Thank you.

I joined this forum just to say this...

THANK YOU!!!

I had the same problem ubass described - floppy trying frantically to load OS (letters loading even appeared), and then nothing.... rescanning the SCSI bus through all ID's

I got 2 spare drives (for free thanks god), and nada, niente, nothing...

I got 2 spare floppies, PC drives of course, and (of course again) they didn't work

Until I twisted cable.....  ;D ;D ;D

Floppy was recognised, OS was loaded, it is now copying to a hard drive, and I just love you people here. After 3 weeks of having piece of scrap metal in my rack, my EIIIXP is wokring again

Going to sleep thinking happy thought.....

btw, same happened to me yesterday, AFTER my samsung PC drive was recognized by Emu.... it appears I had bad diskette, to be more precise, TWO of them. the third diskette with OS worked like a charm, so don't give up, try formatting several disks!

Can't anybody help me?

I bought an other eIIIxp with 32mb of ram and a hard drive inside.
It was running ok until I connect an external jazz drive with terminators.
Since this, I think the hard drive of my new eIIIx is deaed because when it powers on I hear the hard drive start but it stop before the "check scsi id n°2 which is the internal drive ID.

Now I got the same problem with the other EIIIx.

On startup it recognize the os but then it's a never ending search for scsi.

I tried to connect an 9.1gb hard drive bought on ebay: nothing,
I tried the cf card reader method describe on the EIII topic with acard controller and Kingston 1gb cf card: nothing.

Does anybody know if the drive you connect to this sampler need to have a formated e-mu EIIIx bank to startup correctly.

I bought two of this samplers, hard drives, terminators, cf card ide adapter, ide scsi adapter and a cf card 1gb and I still don't get it...................

I'm going crazy with this stuff, what can I do? ???

HELP HELP HELP HELP

Rectape,

I'm trying to understand the problem you have...

Are you booting from a floppy disk ?
Because if you have an unformatted SCSI hard disk connected to the EIIIXP, you should boot from a floppy disk and then choose to format the hard disk/zip disk... Once this is done, the EIIIXP should be able to boot from the hard disk the next time you boot the machine.

///E-Synthesist

I boot from floppy on my 2 EIIIxp, they recognize the os versions but then they never stop to"checking fot scsi device".

I can't acces to any menu.

Is there a method to reset the EIIIx or something else?

Thank you.

I tried several SCSI CD-Rom drives with my EIII.
I had the same problem as you: The EIII was cycling through the "checking....." procedure. I had to turn the EIII off, then disconnect the CD-Drive and turn it on again. Everything was fine again.
With the third drive I tested (Apple CD 300), everything worked at once.

So what I think is, that maybe the Harddisks you bought are somehow not compatible. I'm not a tech guy, but - as I said - my EIII has the same problems with several CD-Rom drives (in this case comparable to your harddisks).

I would disconnect all SCSI devices (just boot a testdrive with a floppy), and then start reconnecting the SCSI periphery (switching the EIII of each time of course).

Thank you for your answer,

I bought this hard drive on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.fr/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=370138303570 (http://cgi.ebay.fr/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=370138303570)

They say that's a fuji hard drive and they send me a hewlett packard scsi III with scsi adapter.
There are many jumpers on the hard drive and on the adapter.

I think it's not compatible.

Do you know if I can connect a ZIP 250 to the EIIIX?

Thank you.

You can definitely connect a ZIP250 to your EIIIXP. That's what I do...

Haha!
Reminds me of that one CD-Rom drive that didn't work with mine...
It had like 30 jumper-switches on the back.... I gave up on it  :D

And yes - as E-synthesist said - a zip drive shouldn't be a problem.

Ok thank you,

so I will try this way : ZIP 250.

Maybe I miss somethin but I don't understand about how to set up or not the jumpers beside the scsi connections (1 jumper for internal, 1 for external).

In fact I don't understand the difference betwen terminator and terminator power...

If I connect an internal hard drive or a cf card reader, do you know if I need to put the jumper in place?

I have Terminators with led and a in line terminator.

I'll let you know when got the zip.

Big Thanks!

Hello all,

Sorry rectape for not answering your question before but I haven't checked this site for some time now, been occupied with other things  ::) ;)
Anyway, check out emulator archives website about EIIIxp and SCSI:

http://www.emulatorarchive.com/Archives/Samplers/Emulator_IIIX/E3XSCSI/e3xscsi.html (http://www.emulatorarchive.com/Archives/Samplers/Emulator_IIIX/E3XSCSI/e3xscsi.html)

There you will find (I hope) some answers to your questions about SCSI and terminators and terminator power jumpers etc.

How you set the terminator power jumper depends on which unit in the SCSI chain should supply the SCSI chain with power. It's all described on that site - there should only be one unit in the chain that does that! If you have more questions we try to work it out here (hopefully)  ;)

@ dm34987:
Nice to here that it worked out for you with the floppy drive!  :D

Thanks,
Escobar