Look - No Floppies!

Reuben · Post by **Reuben** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 10:07 am

Following some discussion on the Pa2x section I was inspired to try something. I've installed a floppy emulator so I can now access the old "floppy" drive with a USB stick.
Here's the post:
Just reporting that I have installed the floppy emulator in my Pa1xpro and its works a treat.
Iv'e got to say that the installation is not for the faint-hearted - there are a lot of screws to undo and a few tense moments in opening up the beast. Fortunately I found a post here on the forum detailing how to open it up.
The short story is:
Undo all the black screws on the underside of the Pa1xpro (leave the silver screws in place as they hold the keyboard in place), undo also the two screws holding the faceplate of the drive. There is one small screw in the far top right on the back you dont undo as well.
Then there are two screws on the rear panel (the ones right near the plastic end-pieces) that you also need to undo. Now you can carefully turn it back over the right way and lift up the whole top chassis. Now you have to undo the 2 screws holding the headphone jack then undo the 4 nuts holding the drive in place. From here on its pretty much a matter of undoing/unplugging and carefully replacing the old floppy drive with the usb/floppy emulator. On the one I purchased the 2 front screw holes lined up just right but I had to drill two shallow holes in the plastic to make do for the rear holes.
Was it worth it?
Definitely!! My old Pa1x pro now looks like it belongs to the 21st century - No floppy drive!!!! Just a USB input.
Ive tried loading midi files and they work perfectly.
ta da ...!
Here a picture:http://www.box.net/shared/bplkcxmi43
Blessings,
John

neverkorgagain · Post by **neverkorgagain** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 1:02 pm

Thanx for sharing with us bro, and good luck. Im waiting mine to install it...

keysman · Post by **keysman** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 1:07 pm

Looking good

Reuben · Post by **Reuben** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:19 pm

Its available here: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/3-5-1-44MB-USB-S ... 1030wt_905
For GBP21 or approx $33.
Cheap as chips/fries!

Reathpd · Post by **Reathpd** » Sun Feb 27, 2011 9:28 pm

I am interested in a Pa1X and updating the Floppy to USB and adding a HDD emulator as well. Does anyone know if the adding of a hard drive allows access to the USB port on the back of the keyboard? Any suggestions on the replacement of the inter aces?

Reuben · Post by **Reuben** » Sun Feb 27, 2011 11:27 pm

Hi,
The rear USB port is connectable to a computer if you have a harddrive in your keyboard (or HDD emulator) but you still can't plug in a USB pendrive to this port because it acts as a slave only (your computer will see your keyboard as an attached harddrive for moving files about).
The only way to have USB pendrive access is with a floppy emulator.
The floppy emulator I installed will hold the equivalent of 100 floppies but bear in mind the access speed is the same as a floppy drive. Also there are some issues with Operating systems beyond XP. Vista will only recognize the "first" floppy and not the other 99. It is possible the manufacturer (Ipcas) might issue a software update for Visa/Windows 7 but I'm not holding my breath. This is fine if you want to use a pendrive to input say midi files (you'll still fit around 30 in the first floppy segment). The Pa1x will format any pen drive itself you dont even need a computer - but if you do it this way the pendrive will only hold the equivalent of one floppy (With USB pens avaialable for $3 or $4 this isn't such a bad option).
After formatting the pendrive on an XP computer I managed to store on one USB Pendrive the Operating System (4 floppies) and all the Musical Resources (17 floppies). I also managed to format another pendrive to hold the equivalent of 100 floppies of midi files.

dadrian83 · Post by **dadrian83** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 7:16 am

Hi,

The only disadvantage of using a usb floppy emulator is that you are forced to create the so called "virtual" floppy images. Their size cannot exceed 1.44 MB. So, you can't just copy a 5MB MP3 file from you computer to the stick and then load it inside the keyboard!!! The limitation is 1.44MB per file. If a file exceds this limit, the emulator is useless in my opinion.

After all, a USB stick can contain all sort of data (depending on its maximum capacity) ! So, my conclusion is that you can't really expect that just by plug it inside the emulator you'll be able to read its contents !

Thanks,
Adrian.

Post by **karmathanever** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 11:09 am

Their size cannot exceed 1.44 MB. So, you can't just copy a 5MB MP3 file from you computer to the stick and then load it inside the keyboard!!!

It is a floppy emulator, remember that the PA1X still thinks it is a floppy drive - PA1X could not read MP3 from floppy anyway - to get it to do what you are suggesting would require an OS change (and possibly hardware too)

USB floppy emulator is excellent - I've used them for a while now on my Karma and my Yamaha QY700.

Formatting the USB to emulate 100 Floppies is very very simple - managing the data on the Floppy Banks on the USB is also very very simple.

I think it is an excellent invention - worth every cent and potentially prolongs the life of the instrument, not to mention resale value.

So just remember that it is a floppy diskette drive emulator - nothing else - won't play movies, MP3s wav or anything other than what you would normally put on a floppy diskette for the PA1X

Cheers
Pete

Reathpd · Post by **Reathpd** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 1:05 pm

Thank you all for your responses. I unfortunately returned the keyboard to the dealer when I was told the mount and cables for the hard drive are no longer available.

Patrick Babu Singarayar · Sun Oct 02, 2016 4:10 pm

Hi Pete, can this load OS files on PA1x pro elite? Thank you. Patrick

karmathanever wrote:
Their size cannot exceed 1.44 MB. So, you can't just copy a 5MB MP3 file from you computer to the stick and then load it inside the keyboard!!!
It is a floppy emulator, remember that the PA1X still thinks it is a floppy drive - PA1X could not read MP3 from floppy anyway - to get it to do what you are suggesting would require an OS change (and possibly hardware too)

USB floppy emulator is excellent - I've used them for a while now on my Karma and my Yamaha QY700.

Formatting the USB to emulate 100 Floppies is very very simple - managing the data on the Floppy Banks on the USB is also very very simple.

I think it is an excellent invention - worth every cent and potentially prolongs the life of the instrument, not to mention resale value.

So just remember that it is a floppy diskette drive emulator - nothing else - won't play movies, MP3s wav or anything other than what you would normally put on a floppy diskette for the PA1X

Cheers
Pete

Post by **karmathanever** » Mon Oct 03, 2016 7:11 am

Hi Patrick

I think it should but never tried it or had one on my PA1XPro !!!
I installed these emulators on my Korg KRONOS and Yamaha QY700 and they worked perfectly - the device does not know any different so you should be able to load OS provided you get the default USB-floppy number loaded with the files. (I imagine the default is "00")

Cheers

Pete

Korg Forums

Look - No Floppies!

Look - No Floppies!

Iinterface update and USB access

USB emulator