Sample Disks with Akai S-900

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Frayo
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Sample Disks with Akai S-900

Post by Frayo » Sat Nov 22, 2008 7:46 pm

I was wondering, what do I have to do to in order to get floppy disk samples to load in to my Akai S900. I bought these samples from a website and they arrived, but when I put them into the thing, it kept saying "Disk is unprepared, you must format it first". So I contacted the seller and he said I needed a system disk in order for them to work. I don't have a system disk, but i have managed to sample and use the sampler without having a system disk.

I was wondering what was up with that. Also, if I do need a system disk, does anyone know where I can find one?
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HideawayStudio
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Re: Sample Disks with Akai S-900

Post by HideawayStudio » Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:38 pm

Frayo wrote:I was wondering, what do I have to do to in order to get floppy disk samples to load in to my Akai S900. I bought these samples from a website and they arrived, but when I put them into the thing, it kept saying "Disk is unprepared, you must format it first". So I contacted the seller and he said I needed a system disk in order for them to work. I don't have a system disk, but i have managed to sample and use the sampler without having a system disk.

I was wondering what was up with that. Also, if I do need a system disk, does anyone know where I can find one?
It is true that you do not need a system disk for S900, S950 or S1000. An S900 should read native disks out of the box - that said, thinking about it now, I have a very vague memory that the S900 may have to boot a slightly later OS to load DD S950 sample disks. All AKAIs have the ability to boot off floppy in priority to ROM boot to permit newer OS's to be run - for example - my S1000 has a V2.0 ROM but boots off HD with a v4.4 OS. That said please bare in mind that the S900 drive is double density and the S950 is high density with DD backward compatibility. The S900 will not read/write HD disks so if your samples are on HD disks you will have to get a friendly S950 owner to convert them for you to DD.

It's been over 10 years since I owned an S900 so I might be imagining things. Were the disks sold as S900 or S950 samples?

Cheers,
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