Hi, Jupiter5,

Yamaha PSR9000 uses 2.5 inch IDE drives (laptop drives). The largest disk size that PSR9000 recognizes is 8 GB, with maximum partition size of 2 GB. For example, if you install a 12 GB disk in PSR9000, you will only be able to format it to 4 partitions of 2 GB each. The disk should not be thicker than 12.7 mm to be installed in PSR9000. Most of the current laptop drives are either 9.5 mm or 12.5 mm and thus most of them can be installed inside the PSR9000. In U.S., an average 12 GB 2.5" IDE drive is about US$150 - US$200.

As far as external drives go, a SCSI based Zip drive is invaluable means of backup and source loading for the PSR9000. Zip drives are too large to be fitted in PSR9000 and so all of them are external. Any 100 MB or 250 MB versions of external Zip drives, SCSI based, are good for this purpose. The speed of external Zip drive through PSR9000's rear SCSI port is quite slow but much faster than floppy drive any way. In U.S., Zip drives cost around US$80 to US$150. In Germany, there is a new USB to hard disk connector that connects between a PC and a PSR9000 hard disk so we can copy/backup files in PSR9000's hard disks conveniently through USB connection via the Windows desktop. This costs about 150 to 200 Euro.

As for SIMMs, PSR9000 uses fairly old non-EDO SIMMs (16-bit bus) with 70 ns or faster speed. The height of the SIMMS has to be shorter than 25.4 mm, and no thicker than 8 mm and no more than 18 memory chips per SIMM module. Since these SIMM modules are dirt cheap, I recommend buying a pair of 32 MB SIMMs (the pair should be of same type). Your largest sample recording is 32 MB or 380 sec.

I hope the above gives you a better picture of what you will be dealing with.

Paul Ip
from Texas