Akai S-612/MD-280 Reviving Quick Disk drives

[Don Edgar]

Haha, I recently bought a second S700 just because it came with the Quickdisks, I figured it would be OK to try and see if the Drive works...well it doesn't, in neither one of the S700s. Anyway, the Quickdisks store one sample (!) per side, so it wouldn't have been a huge improvement...my S700 is still the most inspiring piece of gear I have, everything I put into it somehow sounds "right" to me, must be my 90's HipHop socialisation...please post here if the HxC thingy works for it, I'd be very interested...

[acreil]

Korg also used them in the forgettable SQD-1 and SQD-8 sequencers.

[yoshimodular]

Funny, I have a brand new, old new stock never used unit that i'm thinking to sell ;-)

[Futureman84]

It's often the belt that fails.

I bought a generic belt kit and fixed my S700 drive.

[mp3]

My X7000's drive is probably dead, but I wouldn't know, as I have no quick disks. Luckily mine has the battery backed RAM, so all 16 samples stay in memory. Which doesn't help if I want to replace one of them... @nd'ed on the HxC. You pull it off and you're my personal favorite gearslut from here on out.

[Oli]

Yeah, that would be a great replacement. Good luck with it.

[dougt]

My MKS-100 and MKS-200 also use these... Yeah often they just need a new belt.

[Rob Ocelot]

Strangely enough, the belt in the nasty MD-280 was intact. Go figure.

My research on the QD format has turned up that it might be easier to emulate the drive without resorting to a floppy drive emulator. The QD drive writes a continuous spiral on the disk as one line. A better analogy is a really fast audio tape. Once the emulator gets the proper signals (eg, 'motor on' and 'ready') it just dumps the data and relies on the moving head so the spiral doesn't cross itself. Data retrieval happens in the same way, with the moving head reset to the start of the disk.

Next up is a scope to find the data transfer rate and the sequence of events needed to start a write or read. The emulator would then just act as a middleman between the SD card hardware and the drive controller.

[deft_bonz]

Haven't tried my MD280 at all, since I got it for free together with the S612. Now I won't dare to

[bluegreengold]

Unless you have the original factory set of sounds, I wouldn't bother trying to fix the quick disk drive. I did fix the drive in my x7000 by replacing the belt and thoroughly cleaning the mess, but I really wanted to know what that shakahuchi sounded like (superb!).

There is free software out there for sample dumps to and from the 612/700/7k.

You can save your samples that way, or if you still want to be anachronistic, but ditch the quick disks, then find yourself a commodore datasette. You can save s612 samples to tape -- so much warmer.

[Don Edgar]

Originally Posted by bluegreengold

There is free software out there for sample dumps to and from the 612/700/7k.

I've searched for something like that but didn't find anything. I've tried it with the Electron software (C6) but it didn't work for me, also there is no information about Midi Sample Dump on the S700s manual. Any more information about this?

[deft_bonz]

Originally Posted by bluegreengold

Unless you have the original factory set of sounds, I wouldn't bother trying to fix the quick disk drive. I did fix the drive in my x7000 by replacing the belt and thoroughly cleaning the mess, but I really wanted to know what that shakahuchi sounded like (superb!).

There is free software out there for sample dumps to and from the 612/700/7k.

You can save your samples that way, or if you still want to be anachronistic, but ditch the quick disks, then find yourself a commodore datasette. You can save s612 samples to tape -- so much warmer.

Warmer? Really? But how do you drive the tape hotter? Is there a special connecter with trim or so?

I think I don't have the factory sounds, although I haven't really checked the all the floppies. They just look neat in the rack. I just like to sample once a time something into it and then record it back.

[Rob Ocelot]

Originally Posted by deft_bonz

Haven't tried my MD280 at all, since I got it for free together with the S612. Now I won't dare to

The MD280 just takes an already bad drive design and makes it worse by having most of the delicate drive parts exposed with that giant gaping hole where you clumsily load the disk. In fact, this is the only time I've seen a 'top loading' disk drive like that rather than the typical 'toaster slot' style. The 280 is also a colossal waste of space -- all in the name of making it match the 2U rack space motif of the S612. The drive controller and the drive itself could easily fit in a small enclosure.

I've tried out the Commodore Datasette port. Very slow, and mine writes but doesn't seem to read samples back. Sysex transfers are pretty damn slow too. The S-612 is aching for a processor/flash ram upgrade. It would be worth it for such a great and useful machine.

Think of it more as an effects/processing box rather than a sampler.

[bluegreengold]

Originally Posted by Don Edgar

I've searched for something like that but didn't find anything. I've tried it with the Electron software (C6) but it didn't work for me, also there is no information about Midi Sample Dump on the S700s manual. Any more information about this?

These akais don't use standard midi sample dump protocol. They predate that. The software is for the Atari ST, but it will run under Steem, and you can pipe midi in and out using an emulated port. The timing of emulated midi on the atari is not good, but works fine for sample dumps and editing.

[bluegreengold]

Originally Posted by Rob Ocelot

The MD280 just takes an already bad drive design and makes it worse by having most of the delicate drive parts exposed with that giant gaping hole where you clumsily load the disk. In fact, this is the only time I've seen a 'top loading' disk drive like that rather than the typical 'toaster slot' style. The 280 is also a colossal waste of space -- all in the name of making it match the 2U rack space motif of the S612. The drive controller and the drive itself could easily fit in a small enclosure.

I agree that there is no need for the drive to take up so much space, but I actually find the crudeness of the quick disk to be charming. It really is so simple. Yes, proper alignment is important, but the mechanism is completely exposed once you take off the shell so you can actually tweak things while watching it trace. And while they don't have a lot of capacity, the do load quite fast, hence the name. The wost thing about them is that it is impossible to find disks.

[mp3]

Originally Posted by bluegreengold

These akais don't use standard midi sample dump protocol. They predate that. The software is for the Atari ST, but it will run under Steem, and you can pipe midi in and out using an emulated port. The timing of emulated midi on the atari is not good, but works fine for sample dumps and editing.

That sounds like a lot of hassle.

[bluegreengold]

Originally Posted by mp3

That sounds like a lot of hassle.

A hassle or the easiest way to save samples for these machines. Perhaps both.

[mp3]

Originally Posted by bluegreengold

A hassle or the easiest way to save samples for these machines. Perhaps both.

perhaps. Until we get an HxC that is... ONWARD!

Anyway, the whole failed quick disk thing is part of the charm of these machines. Its kind of like synths without presets. There's something to be said for the lack of ability to go in any direction but forward... Make something genius today, and instead of recalling it tomorrow, you just make something else genius.

Not that I wouldn't mind a hack... ONWARD!

edit: if you think about it a bit differently: the machines we're speaking of really can't do diddly squat to a sample, so saving the source sound that you fed into it is for all intents and purposes (besides the five minutes you took to do whatever you were going to do with the sample inside the sampler) the same as saving the sample...

[Don Edgar]

Originally Posted by mp3

Anyway, the whole failed quick disk thing is part of the charm of these machines. Its kind of like synths without presets. There's something to be said for the lack of ability to go in any direction but forward... Make something genius today, and instead of recalling it tomorrow, you just make something else genius.

Yep. from the moment I have a sample going I press record on my DAW. Lots of material to be used in a song there...

[edenfilms]

I'm in the unusual position of having an extremely large number of the original Quick Disk libraries for the Akai. I am suffering the classic problem of what would appear to be an unfixable MD280. Not only can I not access the factory samples, I can't access the dozens of samples that I made myself back in the nineties which I am now needing to use (to remix tracks that I recorded over twenty years ago).

Would anyone have a working Akai sampler? If someone would be kind enough to create 24bit wav files for me of my own samples, I would be happy for them to copy the almost complete factory library...

I'm based in Blackheath in South East London and would be happy to travel...

Thanks
David

[goldkillah]

Originally Posted by edenfilms

I'm in the unusual position of having an extremely large number of the original Quick Disk libraries for the Akai. I am suffering the classic problem of what would appear to be an unfixable MD280. Not only can I not access the factory samples, I can't access the dozens of samples that I made myself back in the nineties which I am now needing to use (to remix tracks that I recorded over twenty years ago).

Would anyone have a working Akai sampler? If someone would be kind enough to create 24bit wav files for me of my own samples, I would be happy for them to copy the almost complete factory library...

I'm based in Blackheath in South East London and would be happy to travel...

Thanks
David

I've an X7000 and S700 both with working QDD. I could make 24 or 32bit if you prefer, wav files of course of your library but... I'm in Italy.

if you need help, here I am.

[edenfilms]

Hi

I'm sorry for replying so late to your post. Thank you for your kind offer. Unfortunately, I can't risk posting the disks to Italy as they're quite literally irreplaceable but I really appreciate your offer...