The PSR 9000 USB Interface Card is available from Musitronics. You can find the page at the following URL: http://www.musitronics.de/indexe.html
The Price after shipping to the US is around $143.00 US.
I did the installation myself. However, they recommend that you take it to a authorized service center for installation.
Prior to your purchase of the product, you can download a PDF file that shows the installation guide. I noticed a few things that didn't seem to be covered by the manual. One nice thing, they have started including the piece of metal that fills the small knock out that you remove to install the USB connector in the rear panel of the 9000. All in all, I think anyone with a good degree of electrical and computer experience should find this to be a simple self install. The gentleman selling the product is very nice and quite helpful. It did take a couple of weeks to receive the product, as it comes from Germany somewhere. I think that covers the basics of this great product. If you have further questions regarding it or how well it works, feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Dennis

Hi Dennis,
Congrats on taking the plunge and getting what seems to be a great product. I have been considering a similar purchase for some time (months!). My main concern is that how does it operate with an installed HD. From the literature it seems to imply that you operate with it or the HD but not both, concurently. Is this correct? I am wanting to use it to back up my installed HD (amongst other things).
Thanks for any assistance you can give on the matter.

Regards,

Jon

Jon,

the main issue is, to get the internal HD working together with USB. That's what's the interface is about. Without the HD the USB interface is useless.

The USB interface is designed to establish a connection between the internal PSR/PRO HD and a PC via USB.

Exactly what you would like to do, backing up the internal HD to you PC, thats the great advantage using that interface.

It's running in my PRO now without any problems and I do regular backups from my PRO HD onto my PC/CDROM.

Regards

Ulrich

Hey Jon,

Ulrich has it right when he say's you must have a hard drive to utilize the USB Interface Card. The Card is only a means of having direct access to the hard drive on the PSR. Musictronics does offer a package deal for a 5 gig hard drive along with the USBIF Card. I don't believe you will find an easier way to edit, save, transfer or backup files from the comfort of your PC Desk chair.
The ease of use is great. I recently edited and transfered over a thousand karaoke files to the hard drive on the psr. It's no different than working with hard drives onboard your PC. The Drive and any partitions all show up in your windows explorer/MY COMPUTER. The money is well spent if you like editing on the computer or if you want to download files from the internet and save them directly to your PSR. So if you've got the dough this products a go! ... as in GO and get one.

Regards,

Dennis Almond
AKA. TwoNuts (Me & the Mrs Almond)

[This message has been edited by TwoNuts (edited 05-08-2002).]

Dennis and Ulrich,
Thanks very much for your feed-back. It certainly sounds like a great product. When I wrote my initial post I am sorry that I did not express myself very clearly.

What I meant to say was that if I am using the keyboard (interface) and looking to upload a file from the hard disk, normally if I have a SCSI hd connected as well I can see the FD, HD and SCSI disks. I can then select which disk I want. If the USB is working and my computer is on, then looking from the Keyboard interface do I see the computer's HD as well as the FD, HD and SCSI disks?

The USB's manual that I read seemed to be a little vague on this. It gave me the impression that looking from the Keyboard interface, I would only see either the HD or the USB's attached Computers's HD, not both together. SO if this was so, what would be the switching mechanism between the two?

In consideration of your comments, this question may only be accademic, because no one would normally operate (during live performance) in this fashion.

Having "talked" it through with you, I don't believe it is a critical issue for me now anyway. But I would still welcome your comments.

Regards,

Jon.

Jon,

I may have been under the same impression you are prior to my purchase of the USBIF Card. You cannot see or access any of the drives on you Computer from the PSR.

Dennis

Dennis,
Many thanks for clarifying the issue.
Regards,

Jon.

The USB board is becoming more and more popular with users at our PSR Groups. It is particularly useful now that one of our members has writting us an "automatic styles sorting program". It allowed machine sorting of ~75% of my 30,000+ styles collection and easily found duplicates, even where only the name of the style had been changed!

Using this program with the USB interface should make organizing and loading my HD on my new PSR-9000 a breeze.

Bob Gelman

PS:

We received this unsolicited the other day:

Hi Group,

This is not a paid testimonial, but I am ecstatic with the
Musitronics USB interface card which arrived yesterday from Germany
and is finally working tonight. It turns the 9000 Pro keyboard into
a totally new tool, an actual work station, the one Yamaha should
have marketed but did not.

From the screen of either of my two desktop computers, or a laptop, I
can cut, paste, edit, name or rename, delete, rearrange files,
shuffle folders, defragment the hard disk...you name it.
Effortlessly. All of this is next to impossible, using the 9000's
LCD screen and the prehistoric Yamaha software, confusing buttons and
messages, and incomprehensible owner's manual. But with the
interface, the 9000's disk is just one more (actually four more
drives) on my network. I can even play MIDI's directly from the
keyboard's disk, through the USB cable, and through either computer's
Soundblaster Live! card, via any sound bank I choose, and out through
my sound system. As with any disk under windows, you can check its
properties and see, graphically, how much space has been used.

You can download MIDI's, .WAV samples, styles, anything directly from
the internet to the 9000's hard disk. And of course you can export
your works the same way. My 9000 is now a whole new ball game.
Managing its hard disk is now simple, friendly, and uses standard
Windows displays on your PC.

At the beginning, I said I had "finally" gotten the interface
working. After installation yesterday, all was well until I tried to
connect it to a computer for final configuration. At the end of the
process, it would cause either computer to crash; blue screen,
lockup, chaos. I sent a late (Saturday) night E-mail to Oliver
Schwarz of Musitronics, describing the problem and suggesting that
he not spend any time on it until after the weekend. (After all,
today was even Mother's Day.)

Well, I don't think Oliver ever sleeps. Early this morning, I had a
reply, asking for more information. During the day, we exchanged a
number of E-mails to narrow it, deciding early that the problem most
likely involved software drivers, and not Musitronics' hardware.
Oliver kept at it, always answering before I expected a response. We
narrowed it to a conflict with a probable faulty Adaptec virtual
device driver, related to "Easy CD Creator". Oliver found a newer
one, E-mailed it to me, I set it up, and the problem disappeared. I
could not be more appreciative of this man's help, far beyond what I
have experienced with any American software or hardware supplier in
recent years. With most, once you have paid for the product, you are
on your own; if your Windows operating system doesn't work very well,
Bill Gates would like to sell you a new one...again and again.

I imagine this is not news to those of you who have already dealt
with Musitronics, but it was very refreshing to me.

Anyway, I wanted to share this with those of you who may be tottering
on the brink of deciding whether to order the USB interface. Jump!

But note that there was a delay of some weeks before receiving the
board, because of a surge in orders from folks who had apparently
also read good things in a keyboard magazine.

Now, I think I'll go into the kitchen and find a way to celebrate.

Phil