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If dude is for real about holding it for a few days until I'm back in town, I should be getting a great deal on an S900. It has a dead Floppy drive and I was planning to replace it with a USB or SD Floppy emulator. Anyone with experience doing so? I'm familiar with the HxC emulations, though a bit over my head, I think I could probably get it figured out. Any recommendations? SD or USB? Any specific drives you can point me to? Thanks!

i have a usb floppy emulator in my MPC60. prob the same one you need for the S900…? or similar. i got it off ebay from china for cheeps. it works great and was super easy to install! the instructions for saving and loading are kinda hard to understand but once i figured it out i wrote it down so i wouldn't forget it.

the model # on it is SFRM72-FU.
its the smaller floppy size version because thats the type of disks the 60 takes and its got 2 digit screen instead of 3. i've seen ones w/ 3 digits allowing u for more virtual floppies.
just make sure u get the right floppy size version for your needs

hope u figured out a plan for getting the OS on the emulator or something or i'm sorry to say u aint' doing nathan w/ that S900….(needs the disk drive to boot up the OS every time you use it.)

yeah I had an S900 with an HxC thing and I barely knew how to use it at all. Honestly I flipped the sumbitch, and then I re-bought the MPC 60 I sold. I sold that later due to size but Im sure you could have better luck then I have. The filter sounds great and sampled material is great, I probably would've kept longer if I had the drum trigger expansion board.

The thing is since the s900 has no SCSI it's pretty lame when managing files especially since there are really cool things. I would rec commend you actually find the thread on gear slutz about SCSI and old samplers. There is a pretty large thread about it. I definitely got help regarding my HxC thing.

Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D. wrote:hope u figured out a plan for getting the OS on the emulator or something or i'm sorry to say u aint' doing nathan w/ that S900….(needs the disk drive to boot up the OS every time you use it.)

That's what the HxC emulation is suppose to take care of, right?


Looks like I'll definitely be getting it, he sent an email letting me know he took the ad down and it's mine. Things only $150...it seems like he thinks it's broken because it's mono and doesn't output like his other samplers. Says the mix out only puts out in the right channel, but it's mono, so would obviously only be in 1 channel. Other than that, the screen's back light is strong and everything but the floppy drive seems great.

Not really looking to use as a performance piece, more of a mixing tool for drums and some of the forced panning with single cycle waveforms via outs 1-8.

I'm interested in how this plays out, as I'm in the same boat.

That said, my S-900 fires up and will operate okay without the floppy, which is toast, so I'm not convinced they need a floppy based OS like the MPC. I just can't save shit.

crochambeau wrote:I'm interested in how this plays out, as I'm in the same boat.

That said, my S-900 fires up and will operate okay without the floppy, which is toast, so I'm not convinced they need a floppy based OS like the MPC. I just can't save shit.

I'll keep you you updated. I've been reading non stop the past 2 days. Here's what I've learned so far:

up until this year you could really only use the SD card Emulation http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=121 pretty damn pricey.

As of a couple months ago, the USB variant that was READ ONLY has since been updated to read/write ability meaning instead of only importing samples, you can now save samples with the Goteck usb emulator. (here is a version that comes with the HXC license and a usb loaded with the HXC floppy emu file type-this is what I'll be ordering as soon as the S900 is in my possession) http://www.ebay.com/itm/Amiga-Atari-ST- ... SwU1FXP8Dw


The S900 should boot with the RAM based OS with or without the floppy drive, however there is an OS4 (Or S900 v2) that allows the S900 to get the S950 features such as Crossfading loops, plus more. This OS can be found here: http://akai-s900.blogspot.com/2008/02/h ... -s900.html

This OS must be loaded upon each boot or it will revert back to the standard OS. This means whatever floppy or emulated flopping file you are running MUST have the OS4 file on the disk/emulated folder.

Ah, I wasn't aware someone had uprev'd the 900. Awesome.

That emulator is cheap as hell too, bookmarking thread.

Psyre wrote:

Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D. wrote:hope u figured out a plan for getting the OS on the emulator or something or i'm sorry to say u aint' doing nathan w/ that S900….(needs the disk drive to boot up the OS every time you use it.)

That's what the HxC emulation is suppose to take care of, right?


Looks like I'll definitely be getting it, he sent an email letting me know he took the ad down and it's mine. Things only $150...it seems like he thinks it's broken because it's mono and doesn't output like his other samplers. Says the mix out only puts out in the right channel, but it's mono, so would obviously only be in 1 channel. Other than that, the screen's back light is strong and everything but the floppy drive seems great.

Not really looking to use as a performance piece, more of a mixing tool for drums and some of the forced panning with single cycle waveforms via outs 1-8.

yea it should, $150 is a p.nice score! these era samplers are golden sounding.

yea gotek! thats the brand i have. i'm surprised they don't work natively in the S900 but they do in the 60.

crochambeau wrote:I'm interested in how this plays out, as I'm in the same boat.

That said, my S-900 fires up and will operate okay without the floppy, which is toast, so I'm not convinced they need a floppy based OS like the MPC. I just can't save shit.

my b, i thought u needed a boot disk every time regardless on the S900…? how u do it w/o boot disk? is it like an EPROM chip or something?
mine wouldn't boot at all w/o the disk. this was like 5+ years ago tho.

Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D. wrote:my b, i thought u needed a boot disk every time regardless on the S900…? how u do it w/o boot disk? is it like an EPROM chip or something?
mine wouldn't boot at all w/o the disk. this was like 5+ years ago tho.

Mine powers up ready to go. I'm curious now, so I'll time it, but honestly as I recall it's very fast. No idea if it's an added EPROM, I got it used from a friend years ago, so anything could have happened beforehand. (edit: it's version 1.2, and boot is instantaneous so firmware OS)

I've never been able to use the disc drive (even secured a few of the double density discs to confirm), though perhaps there are higher functions I can't access without an OS?

Regarding OS 4, does it support the optional trigger input for the 900? I read that programs saved under it are incompatible with the native 900 system, and that would be a deal breaker for me.

A couple revisions to my prior post as I kept digging further due to a case of insomnia. The Gotek USB's are now Read/Write compatible. No issues sampling in and saving it to the USB.

1.2 firmware does indeed just load off the system, should load upon boot in a factory stock machine- not booting 1.2 even with an empty disc drive is signs of an error.

Lastly, concerning the OS4 and the ASK trigger, even if it doesn't work with OS4, you can just not have the OS4 in the drive which means it boots 1.2 again and you have full access to the ASK trigger functions again. Just be sure to keep 2 seperate groups of files as 1.2 can't use files/samples created/saved when running OS4 and vice versa.
Think of OS4 as turning your S900 into a S950 (or perhaps more along the line of a "S925" ) only when you want to. It still has the memory and file limitations of the S900 though. It's just tempory at your discretion. Akai's tech specs:

INTRODUCTION
Thank you for purchasing the S9V4.0, an exclusive system disk for the
AKAI S900.
The S9V4.0 has been developed to augment the functions of the S900.
By loading this system software onto your S900 V1.2 (1,2), you can
obtain the following additional functions and upgrade the musical
expressiveness of your S900.
1. Pre-trigger recording
2. Special one shot mode
3. Crossfade looping
4. Dynamic Filtering
5. Automatic locating of start point
6. Velocity release by note on
7. Combine two samples for velocity crossfade type samples
8. Changing the velocity mix curve for velocity crossfade
9. Time skew for velocity
10. Key group copy function
11. Disk mode: Compression of sampled data
When using S9V4.0, please make sure you have fully mastered the basic
operation of S900.

WARNING
* The S9V4.0 cannot be loaded unless your S900 is V1.2 (1,2).
* The S9V4.0 cannot be copied. If you have trouble with your disk
under normal use, please consult the Service Division of AKAI's Head
Office through the store where it was purchased.
* Because of the augmented MIDI exclusive function, you may get an
error message if you load an editing software which was not created
by this system software. Please be sure to load this system software
before using editing software and sample data created by S9V4.0.