So the Roland SP-808 was a music sampler that came on the market in 1998 and is considered a bit of a classic by some of its users. It ran its own proprietary embedded OS in flash and storage for music samples was provided by an Iomega Zip 100 drive and the subsequently released SP-808Ex used the Iomega Zip 250 - both these disks used the ATAPI protocol... and both these disks by today's standards sound like your sitting next to a server case during a heat wave! Hence my search for a solid state replacement. Various Compact Flash and SD to IDE adapters have been tested by myself and other users around the internet but unfortunately while the SP-808 is able to detect them in some cases the subsequent results are usually pretty dismal once any attempt is made to write to disk (there are some sketchy records of various CF to IDE adapters working but those particular devices seem to have gone the way of the dodo).

I'm currently working on a device to sniff the conversation between my SP-808 and it's zip-250 using a microcontroller development board but since my coding skills are so rusty this is going to take a few days so was hoping some one may be able to suggest an off the shelf solution? - even better if somebody was able to just save me all the drama by explaining what would have been in the zip drive ATAPI implementation that the SP-808 silently balks at?

On a related subject, once the quirks are discovered is anyone familiar with any PATA devices that have the ability to be retasked/reprogrammed so I could emulate the zip drive in silence - preferably without having to develop a custom circuit board?

Does the Roland work with a real ATA device (eg PATA HDD) or does it insist on seeing an ATAPI device? If the latter, then how were you able to get any Compact Flash adapters to work, even if only partially?

FWIW, I found the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompactFlash



CompactFlash cards and DMA/UDMA support in True IDE (tm) mode:
http://www.fccps.cz/download/adv/frr/cf.html

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I sold my Roland years ago. I remember looking for similar, but instead sold it and bought a new Casio KB and Guitar. guess you would have seen this page:
https://jimatwood.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/converting-zip-drives-to-cf-or-sd-card-drives-for-roland-gear/

where they say the Akai MPC 2000XL MCD Drive works (but isn't hot swappable):

http://www.mpcstuff.com/akai-mpc-2000xl-mcd-drive-kit-hot-swappable-used-black/

fzabkar: the SP-808 recognizes late model PATA HDDs (tested Seagate ST310212A and Quantum Fireball EX) and even pretends to format them however once restarted the formatted drives show up as having zero space. Also any attempt to write to them before the restart (while it still views them as freshly formatted empty disks) ends with the system hanging - presumably this is where the SP-808 would be attempting to do DMA or whatever using quirky Zip mode... This is pretty much the same result I sore when trying with the CompactFlash adapter. Oh also just for giggles tried an old ATAPI cd burner (40x12x48: BENQ 4012P manufactured Feb 2002) and while recognized as a removable media device with no media the SP-808 had serious issues with talking to it since while not actually hung the normal instant response to button pressing took holding each button around 30 seconds to register the press.

HasQue: yes I have seen that wordpress page - unfortunately the author never followed up with publishing any of the results of his experiments, as for the MPC drive mentioned in the comments $275 for a maybe is a bit rich for my taste - I'd prefer to spend the time on it to come up with something that can be used by other SP-808 owners also.

Understood. I am thinking someone with the smarts needs to come up with an emulator circuit that on the roland side the roland thinks it is the device that it is comfortable with and the emu hardware talks to whatever device.. and adds the required. I wish I had time to look into it

I would dump the Zip drive's IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE 256-word information block. That should tell us if there is anything obviously different about the Zip drive.

I would also examine its file system with a hex editor. FWIW, I have analysed the file system of an Akai MPC2000, but I don't know if it would be similar. It's a quirky FAT16 implementation.

Akai MPC2000 - analysis of file system:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=132&p=171

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

FWIW, I have used HDAT2 to get a ton of info from an ATAPI optical drive (GSA-4040B). See the attachment.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

What about intercepting the data as it is being written to the zip disk.. hacking a zip disk drive itself so that it writes to something else instead.. think those strange dummy "cassette tapes" that you used to put in a car cassette player that had an AUX input to plug in a Walkman into to play any device on a car stereo back in the day?

A nice FPGA setup would be able to emulate the translation

_________________
All went well until I plugged the drive in.

I could probably find out all we need to know by getting a standard IDE HDD to sniff its own ATA traffic. I have some other ideas, but I'm waiting for the OP to come back with some info.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Apologies for the delay in getting back, had to resurrect a legacy pc to use for interrogating the zip drive. Now in the process of installing linux [lubuntu-15.04-desktop] and the hdparm program in order to question the zip drive - will update as soon as I figure out which way is up! (diving in the deep end here)

S.M.A.R.T. Error Log ?

_________________
1Q9xrDTzTddUXeJAFRn37aqh1Yr6buDCdw - (Bitcoin Donations)
paypal.me/Spildit - (PayPal Donations)
The HDD Oracle - Platform for OPEN research on Data Recovery.

The methods that I'm proposing depend on running MHDD ver 4.5 in a real DOS environment. I would also prefer to see HDAT2's information dumps. You can run both programs from a bootable flash drive. I have no ideas that would run under Linux. Sorry.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

ISTM that the logical approach to the problem of why some ATAPI/ATA devices work while others don't is to start by querying their capabilities with an Identify Device or Identify Packet Device command. That's the HDAT2 information that I'm waiting for. My preliminary search of Iomega's old web site hasn't turned up much in this regard except that the Zip drive's maximum burst transfer rate is 3.3 MB/sec. That's consistent with PIO mode 0.

Zip ATAPI drive specifications:
http://web.archive.org/web/199904211707 ... ispec.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT_Attachm ... sfer_modes


My theory is that the SP-808 may be wired for PIO mode only, but that its firmware may be trying to use DMA mode for those devices that report this capability. An examination of the circuit diagrams in the service manual may help.

There is a Roland SP-808 user group that appears to have this manual, if the OP would like to obtain it for us ...

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... sage/13572
https://groups.yahoo.com/group/SP-808US ... sage/13572


I would also like to see the Identify Packet Device info block for the Akai MPC2000XL MCD. If this device also reports PIO mode only, then this will lend more weight to my theory.

In the past I have hacked the firmware in a Ricoh 2x CD burner. It reported PIO mode only but I extracted its Identify Packet Device information block and turned on its DMA bits (and recalculated two checksums). The burner then reported that it supported DMA, Windows's DMA checkbox remained enabled, and the burner's transfer rate increased slightly but measurably. In the OP's case we could take an old Seagate drive and use "set stuff" or the ATA DCO commands to disable DMA reporting. If the drive then functions properly within the Roland machine, this will be our proof of concept.

As for sniffing ATA traffic, my idea is to use MHDD to create a pseudo-uncorrectable sector 0 using the ATA READ LONG, SCT READ LONG, or WRITE UNCORRECTABLE commands. I would expect that a typical startup axis would involve sending the following commands to an ATAPI/ATA device:

IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
if error, then IDENTIFY DEVICE
SET FEATURES - set PIO/MWDMA/UDMA mode n
READ SECTOR 0

When the drive errors out on the READ command, it will log the 5 most recent ATA commands in its internal error log. This log can be retrieved with standard ATA commands.

Just for reference ...

Product Manuals for Zip, Jaz, Clik!
http://web.archive.org/web/199904280943 ... nuals.html

Zip ATAPI Installation Guide for VAR's and Integrators:
http://web.archive.org/web/200009180400 ... 325401.pdf

Zip ATAPI User's Guide:
http://web.archive.org/web/200106122147 ... 330001.pdf

Zip ATAPI Internal Owner's Guide:
http://web.archive.org/web/200008170955 ... 358101.pdf

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Just for the fun of it, I've plugged one DVD optical drive to my HRT card.

This is what i get from an ID device





DUMP :



This is ... COOL !

_________________
1Q9xrDTzTddUXeJAFRn37aqh1Yr6buDCdw - (Bitcoin Donations)
paypal.me/Spildit - (PayPal Donations)
The HDD Oracle - Platform for OPEN research on Data Recovery.

Your optical drive supports PIO modes 0 and 1, MWDMA modes 0 - 2, and UDMA modes 0 - 2. It is currently set at MWDMA mode 2. The transfer cycles times are 120ns.

What do you get from an Identify Device (ECh) command?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

ERROR and ABORT even if i put a CD inside the drive



I will try with another drive

_________________
1Q9xrDTzTddUXeJAFRn37aqh1Yr6buDCdw - (Bitcoin Donations)
paypal.me/Spildit - (PayPal Donations)
The HDD Oracle - Platform for OPEN research on Data Recovery.

This one doesn't accept the EC either, just the A1 :

_________________
1Q9xrDTzTddUXeJAFRn37aqh1Yr6buDCdw - (Bitcoin Donations)
paypal.me/Spildit - (PayPal Donations)
The HDD Oracle - Platform for OPEN research on Data Recovery.

From the ATA standard ...



After command completion, with or without errors, the registers for an ATAPI device should look like the following:

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

SURE !!!
It's like that for my drives, but when they did report ERROR and ABORT there was no Data Request, so no data on the buffer to grab I didn't care for the registers that the DVD drive returned, as there was no data on the buffer to get

_________________
1Q9xrDTzTddUXeJAFRn37aqh1Yr6buDCdw - (Bitcoin Donations)
paypal.me/Spildit - (PayPal Donations)
The HDD Oracle - Platform for OPEN research on Data Recovery.