FG
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How-to Guide: Installing an internal hard drive in an MPC2000XL.
Hey folks,
A while back I said I'd be putting an internal hard drive in my MPC. Well, I finally got around to it so I thought I'd document it and post it up for
anyone that's thinking of doing the same.
Before you get to it, unplug your MPC. It pays to push the on/off button a few times once it's unplugged, too, as this will help the capacitors in
the power supply discharge fully. Those things pack a fair wallop if you get hit by one. Probably won't kill you but it sucks. Also, best to touch
something grounded to get rid of any static electricity you're carrying. The MPC2000XL is pretty bullet proof to that sort of thing given that it
uses proper old componentry but all the hard drive circuitry is surface mount rubbish and you could fry it with a decent static spark.
Parts:
This is the SCSI hard drive (9.1gb, $40 delivered off eBay), attached to that is a SCSI 68pin to SCSI 50 pin adapter (came with the drive), a 50 pin
SCSI ribbon cable ($11 delivered off eBay) and a power supply lead (pilfered from an old computer some one had put out on the nature strip - gotta
love hard rubbish collection week).
The adapter is really straight forward. And connects as shown in the photos above.
Before you even get started you should set the jumpers or dip switches for your hard drive/scsi adapter correctly. You want to have Terminator Power
Return (usually Tp1 or TPR) turned ON (that means put a jumper on it). Also, you may have to set your SCSI ID via the jumpers, too, but I didn't and
the MPC automatically made it SCSI 2. Lastly, and this is a biggy, make sure that the jumpers are set so that the drive will spin up as soon as the
MPC is turned on. This may vary from drive to drive but for me it meant that I had to remove the REM jumper. If in doubt, look up your brand and
model of hard drive online - I was easily able to find the manual for mine which contained all the info I needed.
Procedure:
Step 1: Flip the MPC over and take off the baseplate. It should look like this:
Step 2: Connect the power lead. For this, I piggy-backed off the power supply going to the Compact Flash reader (you can do the same
for power to your zip or floppy drive, it's all the same power). I did that as follows:
Unplugged the power supply from here. And too the plastic cover off the back. Some power supply plugs will have little sockets housed inside their
plastic connector with the wires crimped in place. You can still piggy back off these it's just fiddlier to get them apart and then you have to
solder your leads to the little sockets inside. Luckily my power supply connector was a simpler design as you can see below.
Next, strip a little bit off the ends of the wire.
And then press it into place with the wire of the corresponding colour. There are two black wires. I don't know if it matters if these get mixed up
but I just matched up each black wire to its corresponding black wire anyway. As you can see below.
Step 3: Plug the parts together. The SCSI port is located at the back of the MPC, under the ribbon for that connects the pads to
the CPU board. That ribbon is delicate and it's a tight squeeze to get it all to fit in. I ended up tucking the SCSI cable under the power supply
PCB to the right of the SCSI port.
IMPORTANT: Make sure your SCSI cable is the correct way around. I knew this was an issue because I used to have SCSI in an old
computer but I still put the cable in arse backwards the first time. Your SCSI cable with have probably have 3 connectors on it: one on each end and
one in the middle. The middle connector will be closer to one end than the other. The end of the cable which is closest to the middle connector
should plug into the SCSI port on the MPC - the other end should plug into the hard drive.
Step 4: Find a place to fit the hard drive. I shit you not, a 3.5" Hard Drive is a very tight fucking squeeze. You need to remove
the Flash Rom adapter (already removed from the port in the photo below) and, depending on where you position the drive, you might need to bend the
Flash Rom bracket out of the way a little. It takes no small amount of creative engineering to get a drive this big into a space that small - it's
like unbirthing a baby.
Step 5: Admire your work. The reattach the baseplate.
You'll notice that I've put some plastic on the hard drive, this is just to insulate it from the baseplate, because the MPC is earthed through the
casing.
Step 6: Boot up the system. Go to LOAD or SAVE, hit F3 and use the data wheel to scroll across. It will probably say "SCSI Not
Read" for the first couple of SCSI IDs then one of them will work (for me it was SCSI 2) and the MPC should identify your drive e.g
Device: SCSI-2
Vendor=SEAGATE
Product=ST39103LC
Now format that bitch and use until your hearts content.
Things to note:
It's relatively noisy (in comparison to the silence I'm used to).
I have concerns about heat so I've planned another mod for the future to create a bit more space inside and install a CPU fan to deal with this issue.
I'll post that up once I've done it.
The MPC2000XL will only officially work with HDD up to 4.5gB. Mine is a 9.1gb, unpartitioned, and the MPC recognises the entire space
available (whether it will write to it all, I don't know because I haven't put over 4.5gb on it).
This is a fiddly but pretty simple mod. A lot of little things came up for me as I did it and I was able to troubleshoot them all. Use the above as
a guide, but use your brain and resourcefulness when you get stuck.
If you choose to do it, have fun!
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FG
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Oh and two more things...
I had to cut off a rubber block from the inside of the baseplate so that I could fit the hard drive in. I repositioned this under the edge of the
hard drive to provide greater support.
And, I think I mentioned here - or maybe it was mpc-forums - that my MPC was having earth issues. It was giving me a shock when I touched the metal
case of any input/output leads and the black backplate at the same time. As suspected it was a loose earth screw. I just tightened this firmly and
it is fine now.
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eddyextrackt
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interesting, might look into doing this for my xl, though im pretty happy with my multicard reader as im not producing enough to max out many sd
cards, cheers for the info!
i'l move this to the hq section
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FG
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Yeah, should I just post this stuff straight into the HQ section? I always feel like it'll just sit here unseen unless I post it in the main section
first.
But yeah, if you do choose to do it, I'd recommend using a 2.5" drive. Almost impossible to get in SCSI these days as they are laptop drives and they
were made back in the day when laptops were about twice as expensive as desktops so not many of them came with SCSI drives. You can get them cheap in
IDE but they tend to be 20gb at the smallest. I've read that they're still compatible but you need to set up a couple of 4.5gb partitions and, I
think, they only use 9gb max. Still, a 120gb IDE 2.5" drive will probably be cheaper than a 20gb one anyway. The only problem then is finding an IDE
to 50pin SCSI adapter. They don't seem to be easy to lay your hands on these days and will run you for over $100 if you can find them.
If you go for a 3.5" drive like mine then you can get you hands on smaller SCSI drives pretty easily and the adapters are cheap as chips. However,
you might want until I've posted up my next mod which aims to increase the space in the case so that heat won't be such of an issue. At the moment
it's really jammed in there pretty tight. I'm not to comfortable with what the long term consequences of that might be.
I'm still going to be saving my beats onto CF cards but I'll be using the HD to store all my breaks and one shot hits and stuff which I use all the
time. I'm sick of trying to hunt down my CF card with drums and such on it whenever I want to load or save a break.
[Edited on 8-12-2011 by FG]
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FG
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Oh, and if you want to save yourself the hassle of installing it, you can always get an external SCSI drive. They're pretty cheap these days and it's
a shit load easier to set up. I didn't do it though because I didn't want to take another bit of gear out with me when I was doing shows. Plus, I've
had issues with external SCSI Zips bugging out and forcing me to restart before I could save/load.
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eddyextrackt
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Yeah look, post in the main forum and i'll move it in here once its had a week or two of the main forum traffic.
I have a few old ide hdd's from my pentium 2/3 days lying around (one of them @4 gig and 2 @ 8), though im not liking the limited space factor and
heat issues.. I might go the external SCSI route instead, save me messing with anything inside the box. I need to start storing all my breaks/hits for
the XL, since its a bit of a deterant having to pull them off the shelf everytime haha, I'l definatley stay tuned to see how the next phase goes.
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MrGarlic
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good write up FG.
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PR1
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Interesting man, never thought youd be able to feel anything in there.
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FG
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BTW, Eddy, I have a sneaking suspicion that with an external SCSI drive you MAY be able to have both your PC and your MPC plugged into it at the same
time. Of course, you'll need a SCSI card for you PC - who knows how much they cost these days. But, if that's the case then you could MAYBE save
stuff from your PC onto it and then load it straight away onto your MPC. That would be pretty fucking sweet.
Of course, I may just be imagining things. It's worth asking about/searching for on mpc-forums, though.
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