I did some tests timing MIDI SDS vs. SCSI sample transfers on the EIII and the results are quite dramatic!
The maximum 16-bit sample size you can dump via SDS is 2097151 samples, however due to the sample being split into many packets, the actual maximum sample size via MIDI is closer to 2097000 samples.- 2097003 samples via MIDI/SDS took 4852 seconds (1 hr 20 mins 52 s) = 0.42 KBytes/s
- 2097003 samples via SCSI took 100 seconds = 20.48 KBytes/s
Also, SCSI has no size limitations, so I also got the following test result:
4185031 samples via SCSI took 190 seconds (21.51 KBytes/s).
This is the first time I've used Alchemy 3.0 to communicate with the EIII over SCSI. I was surprised you don't need MIDI hooked up at all. All the commands are sent via SCSI also.
I would love to get a "modern" SCSI-USB adapter and write software that would run on modern OSs that could do SCSI sample dumps to/from the EIII
-Dave