Accessing A K2Vx Internal Drive From The Mac; The Midi Sample Dump Standard - Kurzweil K2000 - MUSICIANS GUIDE Musician's Manual

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Accessing a K2vx Internal Drive from the Mac

Access PC is one of the many programs for the Mac which allow it to format, read, and write to
DOS ßoppy disks and removable SCSI cartridges. However, we have discovered that it is
possible to format internal K2vx hard drives, even though the documentation claims to only
support removable media (not a Þxed drive). Because the program claims not to be able to do
this, we do not necessarily recommend it.
The main thing to remember is:
Never change the disk contents (i.e., save or delete Þles) from the K2vx when the disk is
mounted by the Macintosh. If you do, this could easily lead to trashed Þles, directories, or even
the entire disk. Access PC has no way of knowing when the K2vx has modiÞed the disk
structure, and it can just overwrite any state of the disk it thinks should be there. The safest
thing is to connect a drive to either the K2vx or the Mac, but not both at the same time. Of
course, you can't always predict when a Mac will access its drive, and it doesn't do SCSI bus
arbitration, so using the Mac while using the SCSI bus from the K2vx (e.g., doing a disk mode
operation) is also a bad idea, and can cause the Mac to hang.

The MIDI Sample Dump Standard

Samples can be transferred between the K2vx and most other samplers and computer sampling
programs using the MIDI Sample Dump Standard.
Due to the relatively slow transfer rate of MIDI data, transferring samples into the K2vx via the
MIDI Sample Dump Standard can take a long time, on the order of a coffee break for a long
sample. Most samplers, synthesizers, and computer software will Òfreeze upÓ during this
process, preventing other features of the machine or program from being used. Your K2vx,
however, will allow you to continue playing the instrument or using any of its sound editing
features during a MIDI Sample Dump! The transfer takes place in the background; the MIDI
mode LED on the K2vxÕs front-panel will ßash repeatedly during the transfer, so you will
SCSI when the K2vx is doing anything via SCSI, the Mac will freak. The only solution is,
wait until your Mac is completely idle before accessing SCSI from the K2vx.
The Mac and the K2vx cannot share a drive in any way, with or without partitions. If you
are using a drive with removable media, you cannot easily switch back and forth between
a Mac formatted volume and a K2vx formatted volume. To prevent problems, you will
need to unmount the drive from the Mac desktop before switching to a K2vx format
volume. The Mac will basically ignore the volume if it's not Mac format, but once you
insert a Mac format volume, the Mac owns it. Don't forget about #1 above; inserting a
cartridge will cause the Mac to access SCSI, so don't try to use the K2K at that moment.
The only good reason for connecting the Mac and the K2K on the same SCSI bus is to use
Alchemy or equivalent. If you're using a patch editor or librarian, you can just hook up via
MIDI. Connecting via SCSI will allow fast sample transfers through the SMDI protocol. In
this type of conÞguration the easiest solution is to let the K2K have its own drive, and the
Mac have it's own drive.
However, we have discovered that when using a K2vx with a Mac and a removable media
drive in the middle of the chain, the following scenario will work:
Start with a Mac formatted cartridge in the drive. When you want to use the K2vx, put the
drive to sleep from the K2vx. You can then change to a K2vx formatted cartridge and
perform whatever disk operations you need. When you want to go back to the Mac, put
the drive to sleep again, switch cartridges, and then wake up the disk by pressing Load .
Of course the K2vx will tell you it can't read the cart, but the Mac will now access it Þne.
MIDI and SCSI Sample Dumps
The MIDI Sample Dump Standard
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