Odd SCSI behaviors with S2000

[Synthetech]

I've been building up a workflow to get CD libraries into my S2000.

I have...

Z100S2 100mb SCSI External Zip Drive
Z100Plus 100mb SCSI/Parallel External Zip Drive

Two Lacie Quantum Fireball 540mb External Hard drives (twins).

An Apple 300i CD Rom Drive hooked up to an extra Lacie empty external hard drive enclosure.. (it looks like feces with it sitting on top of the opened up enclosure, both bare a*s'ed to the world, but it works!)

Akai OS 2.0

Here's the deal..

If I hook up just one of the Zip drives, it works fine.. either one. But when I try to hook BOTH drives up in a chain, it wont see both of them and will not load up ID5's Akai OS on Volume A:.
I have messed with termination switch on the back of the Z100S2 to be on/off, before/after the Z100 Plus drive.
The Z100 Plus drive does not have a termination switch, it does some kind of autodetect..


I can hook up either Zip drive (just one so far) and one of the twin hard drives.. AND have MESA hooked up too via a PCI SCSI card on my WinXP.
It all works fine! (except MESA can be buggy.. not a SCSI issue AFAIK)


But, if I try to hook up only one hard drive (ID5) AND the CD Rom (ID6 or any # besides 5).. I can only access one at a time.
Lemme explain further-
I'll have the hard drive first from the S2K, have termination switch OFF.. then chain on to the CD Rom with Termination jumper ON.
If I have BOTH CD and HD on at the same time at powerup, the HD (ID5) will not load the OS. I can boot via Floppy and the HD still cannot be accessed. But the CDROM can be accessed if I switch to ID6 with the HD on.
If I have JUST the HD on at boot (CD Off) it will boot the OS off the HD.

Now here's the weird part.. after it loads OS from the HD, I can turn the CD on, change the Akai's SCSI ID to the CD's ID (ID6) and it will access the CD.
But if I try to revert the ID back to 5 for the HD, it wont find the HD..
UNLESS I turn the CD back off and try again, only THEN will it find the HD!


So, in order to get a CD volume from CD Rom to HD, I have to..
Boot to OS via HD with the CD Rom off.
Turn the CD Rom ON, switch to ID6, load a volume.
Turn the CD OFF, switch to ID5, SAVE the volume to the HD.
Turn the CD back on, switch to ID6 again.. and do it again... I can do this all night long without a problem.. short of some volumes not loading right(HARD DISK ERROR or WRONG EFFECTS FILE).. either a burn issue from a bad image, incompatible files (maybe for a S5000??) or some other problem.. I can get the majority of CD's to properly load their volumes though.
CD's I find that load best are SoundScan CD's.

I suspect the Zip Drives would work the same way as the CD/HD combo, but have not tested it yet.

It's a pain to do it this way.. but not too bad. I get the job done.
It's just odd that I have to do it this way. I have tried all sorts of configs.. CD first in chain, CD last, term. on/off, etc.
And I have not even bothered to try and get MESA into the mix yet.


And of course, most of you know that MESA will not transfer volumes from, say, a virtual image of a CD to the S2K..
MESA also will not properly save a sample's loop points. You can try to load a volume/sample from CD to S2K, then transfer to the PC via MESA.. but when you try to transfer it back, the loop points have been trashed! At least not on an XP box. Maybe W95 or an older Mac might load them right.. I dunno and I"m not going there!

So, the ONLY way I know to get the programs/samples/loops to load properly is with the CDROM to begin.. then I can transfer it from S2K RAM direct to a HD or ZIP and have it load back in from HD/ZIP correctly.

MESA does have a nice feature that lets you see the volumes in a list on a CD/HD/ZIP.. it also lets you click/drag them in/out of the S2K.
Sure beats the limited 2 line LCD screen on the S2K.


Anyway, I just wondered if anyone had seen this before and has any tips on how to make my workflow better.

I have approx. 30 CD's to manage on two 540mb HD's and several 100mb ZIPS.
It's a bit of a PITA the way I'm going with it.

I wish MESA would work like Kontakt 5. With Kontakt, it can read a virtual CD drive and allow me to load the samples/programs directly, properly and let me preview/play it via the PC.. but my PC is old and wont do much more when Kontakt is running.
But dang, is Kontakt a sweet virtual sampler!
(I'm gearing towards DAW later on when I upgrade the PC to a quad core or better).


I may be trying to revive a system that is simply obsolete and not much value to anyone anymore these days.. but the S2K can sound so wicked when tweaked right.


Thanks in advance for anyone that can chime in.

-Blaine

[Synthetech]

... well I figured out part of my problem.

I forgot that the S2K is ID6. So there was a conflict between the CD and the S2K.

But that didnt fix it all.

I loaded OS up, set the S2K ID to ID7. Resaved the OS to the HD. CDROM is ID6.
If I boot with both HD and CD on, it wont load OS from the HD.
If I keep the CD off until the OS loads from the HD, I can turn the CD on afterwards and the S2K will happily go back and forth between ID5/ID7.. ie I dont have to shut the CD off/on to load CD samples and save to HD.

Now, with the CD termination jumper out and MESA hooked in, I cant get MESA to see the CD!
I'm losing my mind here.. MESA will see the HD just fine, but it flat out refuses to see the CD.
I think it saw it one time, but then I couldnt get it to work.. then MESA wants to lock up and become a huge pain in the a*s.

I've had it with this thing. MESA sucks, there isnt any utility out there that I know of that can do what MESA does, but do it right.
It's a huge PITA to label the volumes via the jog wheel.. I would have thought MESA would let me rename volumes, but NOOOO!

I think I'm just going to load up the HD's the best I can, some Zips.. wrap it all up and list it for sale. I cant deal with this anymore as much as I like it when it does work right.

[gmeredith]

Isn't there something about Mac's that won't let more than one extra SCSI device in the chain? e,g, you can have the host (Mac), the sampler, and one drive in between, but if you put a second drive in between it won't see it??

I only mention this from something I have been fooling about with - a USB SCSI adapter. The specific adapter I was interested in (a Ratok adapter) had drivers for Windows and MAC but mentioned that if used on a Mac, you can only have one SCSI device in the middle, not 2, and that this was only an issue with Macs, not PC.

[synthRodriguez]

Might be insluting your SCSI intelligence, but are you sure you have all your terminators correct?