EMAX II: Out with the Hard Disk and in with the CF Card!!

[HideawayStudio]

Just to let you all know that my PCD50 turned up from these guys:

http://a4000t.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=180

and I've just successfully installed it in my EMAX II Turbo in place of the original (and very noisy!) internal hard disk.

As has been suggested, the trick is to purchase a PCMCIA to CF adaptor and a <1Gb CF card.

This might seem a little odd, afterall you could plug the CFcard into the slot marked appropriately??...no!

Why?  Because each of the slots has a different LUN and EMAX II only supports basic drive IDs and it just happens
that LUN0 is the PCMCIA slot - D'oh!

The existing 50 way ribbon cable, PSU cable and mounting bracket can be used.  If you don't have these, it's easy enough to make them up yourself.

Fortunately in the keyboard version there is enough extra space available to accomodate the space taken up by the CF adaptor.

I'm not so sure about the rackmount - it's been a while since I've owned one.

By default this drive is seen as drive 2 on the EMAX II (ie. without changing any jumpers from factory settings).

After formatting and copying the OS over from a floppy it booted and ran perfectly.

...with one bizarre exception - I can't seem to backup automatically from other drives to the CFcard so I copied nearly 100 banks over manually!

The load and save times are rapid and it is SO nice to now have a perfectly silent EMAX II instead of the washing machine it used to be!

She was up and running for hours on end without issue and running noticably cooler.

It's given me a chance to blow the dust off and revisit this beast - I'd forgotten how smooth and warm this sampler sounds!
 
The digital filter on the EMAX II is very impressive - in fact you'd be fooled into thinking it was analog.

The only complaint I have about the EMAX II over my EII is that sometimes there is a slightly nasal peak about some of the factory sounds.  

I am not sure if this is due to the sampler or whether it's the result of excessive emphasis - it's something I don't hear on the EII but to be honest

the EMAX II's floorless wide and smooth transposition range more than makes up for it.
 
A Highly Recommended Retrofit...  Like HxC on my EII - it's given it a new lease of life.

[PFM]

That's good news - and as you mention, it's so good to use the old Emax II without a noisy and warm hard drive, so you get to really listen to the sound of the samples without major interference.
I replaced both my Emax IIs with 1 Gb CF cards, but went the SCSI-IDE bridge route. It was an absolute nightmare at first, but suddenly found the right CF card media, and it worked like a charm. A truly 'solid state' Emax II Turbo!! Took one of them gigging and it was such a weight off - not having to worry about accidentally knocking the machine and corrupting the hard drive data.