Hello

Like most of us here I'm sure, I have about a zillion disks floating around. What a chore just to check them out and have a system to deal with it.

I am a computer novice, but I got this brainy(?) idea that perhaps an externat hard drive could be "hammed" to work with the PSR2000. I wonder if this would be possible by someone who knows what they're doing? At first I thought a built in hard drive didn't make a difference for me, but I'm really beginning to wonder as I sort through my old disks and the new ones and .....well, I think you get the picture.

Scott Langholff

Hi Scott
No, you can't attach an external hard drive to your PSR2000. But, there is a hard drive version available from Russia, of all places. I'm not making this up. A guy from the Yamaha-PSR-Styles group even sent in links to the website. Their hard drive functions like 100 separate floppies, only very very fast. These guys can fit the hard drive internally with a LED switch on the front edge of the computer, You use that to select what floppy directory you want. It all looked very ingenious. They are the only ones to have done something like this. And, if I remember, it was pretty cheap, something like $160 installed.
Tom G.

Hi Tom: Please provide a 'direct link' to the Russian website which sells this supposable hard drive. Thanks. - Scott

ScottY: lol, you sound just like me. It's as if I can read your thoughts. Mainly because I was going to ask for the same I guess. I have searched around, but have not found anything under Russia, PSR2000, hard drive.

Tom: This looks interesting. I hope you can find the link we're looking for.

Thanx

Scott Langholff

Great Scott's !
Great minds think alike.

Scott

lol. It's great. You make me laugh tonight. I hope I don't get slap-happy. You now it's 1:44 AM here now. You know what happens to our free-spirited musicians minds in the wee hours.

Scott L

Hey ScottY

Do you suppose Tom is just playing a joke? You know the part where he says " I'm not making this up" makes me wonder. It reminds me that almost invariably when somebody says "to tell the truth" you better get ready for a whopper.

ScottL

ScottY

Besides, would you really want to (lol) send your 2000 to Russia to get worked on?/lol

ScottL

Well, 'to tell the truth', this sounds like: To Russia With Love via the Orient (one way) Express . . . hasta la vista 2000

ScottY

lmao

ScottL

Hello

I also posted this question on Yahoo PSR style forum. Vince Cochran the fellow from the UK that sells hard drives and is recommended by the guys that run the main forums answered someone by the name of Oliver was the one. I did a little research and found the address:
www.musitronics.org

His name is Oliver Schartz. This is in Germany. I wonder if this is the one Tom was talking about. Maybe this is no joke. (Boy, I just read my posts from last night I think I was perhaps a little over-tired)

I have e-mailed Oliver. I will let you know what I find out.

Scott Langholff

Hi ScottL: Hmmm. I checked the Musitronics website and found no mention of a hard drive specificly for the PSR2000. Nevertheless, I'm hopefully anxious to find out what you hear from them, cause outfitting the PSR2000 with an internal hard drive (and at $160) sounds almost to good to be true. The only real complaint I've had about the PSR2000 is the lack of a hard drive, so if this can be solved, this would be a FAR more economical route than upgrading to the Tyros, and with the 2000, you get the great sounding built speakers, with the Tyros you don't. - Scottyee

I remember a while back that Sony was coming out with a high capacity floppy drive. It would be something like 200 times the storage as a typical 1.44 floppy. I have heard that it is easy to swap out the floppy on the 2000 if the drive should be faulty. I have done this on many PCs and seems a pretty easy thing to do. I don't know if the pin (plug in) is the same for an off-the-shelf floppy drive but if it is and the High Capacity ones are compatible it seems that you could do-it-yourself. I am a do-it-myself type person (I built my own house with my own 2 hands (see my URL)) and have put together computers from scratch as well. I will try to do some research and see if this can be used.

- Brian

Brian: We PSR2000 owners all anxiously await to hear the results of your research, as the PSR2000's lack of mass storage support seems (to me) its only major shortcoming. - Scott

Hi

I hope we're on to something here. ScottY: I haven't heard back yet from Musitronics. As soon as I hear something I will let you know.. I also asked if they didn't if they knew of anyone that was, I even mentioned the Russia thing. Between that and Brians ideas I am getting hopeful. Fingers crossed.

Scott Langholff

Hi

Has anybody looked at the inside of the PSR2000 to see if a hard drive could be plugged in?

Scott L

Boys and girls,

Here is the link to the website that has the hard drive for the PSR1000/2000
http://www.2av.com.ua/indexe.htm

Never tried it though.
Good luck !

WOW LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!!!!

This is it!! Tom was right, no joke (Tom hope I didn't offend you with my attempt at some humor)

They are located in Ukraine (Russia).

I have e-mailed them to get the scoop.

Another address was listed from Germany, but I could not e-mail them.

I will let you all know as soon as I know any details that might be important.

Russia of all places.

Thanx

Scott Langholff

Hello

Just to let you know I put a post on the Yahoo psr styles forum as well as the PSR2000 forum to see if anyone has any experience with this devise or company.

I think I personally would want a lot of info before I got something from Ukraine.

I am also hoping that Brian can find something out that sounds favorable, as this might be another good option or maybe even the way to go about this.

I'll keep you all posted.

Scott Langholff

This is fasinating news that I've been wanting to hear for a long time, though as ScottL states, I'm remaining skeptical until we can find out more about the success & reliability of both the product & the company itself. Thanks Lukitoh for the weblink, Brian & ScottL for your detective work, and of course my good buddy Tom Griglock (TomTomSF) for bringing all this up in the FIRST place. You guys are the GREATEST ! - Scott

I did some preliminary research as well as visited the sites listed in this discussion. It seems that they have linked a Hard Drive Memory (HDM) to the system. Since memory is relatively cheap today it makes sense to store everything not on a disk but in memory (similar to the way the PSR2000 stores its information today).
I will try to get a translation tomorrow if I have time to see more about what they are doing. It is my guess that some aspect of the operating system must be changed or fooled into thinking there is that much space available to it.
I did find some replacement floppy information. There is the Imation Superdisk which holds 120 MB of info in a floppy sized disk. It is backwards comaptible and will read lower density floppies as well. They had an internal IDE drive that was 27 times faster than a floppy but they no longer manufacture it in the USA. I did not find any technical specification that said it could just be plugged into a floppy connection though it was probably designe as that. I found it priced from about $74-129. It operated under windows which leads me to believe that some modification to the 2000 might be necessary as well.
Since I just bought my 2000 back in August I am a bit concerned that opening up the Y2K would cancel my warranty. It still has that new car smell! I'm not even sure what kind of connection is used to drive the internal floppy on the Y2K.
There is also the CU-VFSD50 floppy disk adapter. This allows a user to use DS memory cards and insert them into a floppy disk looking device. Then the computer thinks it is looking at a floppy but it is actually a high capacity memory card. This might be enough to fool the Y2K by itself.
Obviously more research needs to be done.
Hope this helps a bit.

- Brian

Confused? Bewildered? .. Then my work here is done.

Geez! YOu guys are fast! I just post my reply last night, and already you answered your own questions! I'm glad lukitoh posted the link. Now, if you go to the Messages section of the Yamaha-PSR-Styles group and use the "Search", you will find the related messages. There is a guy that belongs to the group that live in Russia. I think his name is Alexander Lutov, or something like that. He is also a programmer who wrote some software for the PSR. He said he knew several friends in Russia that had the hard drives installed on their keyboard. He said he has played and used the hard drive and it works great. I'm tempted to buy one since they say it's very easy to install. I wonder if they take VISA or how the heck you can make the payment.
Tom G.

Brian (MagicUser)

I just read your last reply. The "Super Floppy" will not work. Neither will the ScanDisk or Olympus SmartMedia to floppy adapter. These both require you to load software drivers to the OS. That is not possible on the PSR. The genius of the Russian device is it get around this problem because the PSR thinks the HD is really a floppy drive (actually a collection of them). But the PSR loads very, very fast because it's from the HD. Or so they say...

Hey People

Kind of like being a kid a few days before Christmas huh? ZOWEE!!

Scott

Yeah, this recent PSR2000 HD possibility has built up the excitement level in me too.

If this PSR2000 hard drive thing pans out, it will be 'heaven sent' news to us PSR2000 lovers, especially because the PRIMARY reason I was considering upgrading to another arranger was for the hard drive capability. Now it appears that outfitting the 2000 with a HD will be a low cost (less than $150) alternative to the Tyros ($3,000). Ok, I admit that the Tyros has those highly impressive mega-voices and styles (yet same Yamaha type) re-sequenced at 1920 ppq, but are these two features alone worth paying nearly $3,000 extra for? Something serious to consider folks. I guess the sooner the Tyros arrives, the sooner we'll know the answer.

Scott

Hello

Well, I did find this much so far. Check it out.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yamaha-psr-styles/message/16221

Also message 16178 at the same site.

Scott

[This message has been edited by Scott Langholff (edited 11-15-2002).]

It is a wonderful device and congratulation to those who develop it, just a quick question the controller which controls the number of the floppy drive seem to have only 2 digits (00, 01, 02 etc.) now if we buy a bigger drive which use more than 99 floppies how would we see that number? And how would we select it? I am really interested in this HDM.

Sorry guys I don't want to ruin the party, but in my Roland G800 I also had a "Mega-floppy drive", made especially for Roland in Italy.This drive was just a piece of junk...
I have to admit that it was several years ago so speed was not enhanced like it is thesedays, but the main problem with this drive was the access to get a file if you didn't know exactly at which number it was located.
Sometimes if I needed a midi-file not listed and not played often it could take several minutes (yes minutes) to find it...

Anyway my Roland had to be repaired two times because this drive took more power from the power-supply and the second time they knew that this was the problem so they made a by-pass directly from the tranformer to this drive.
After 2 years of playing the harddisc crashed since it was "on" always.
Not to mension the noise of the drive anyway.
After this crash I just bought my G-1000.I was lucky to have kept the original plate just above the floppiedrive where this drive was placed.
Just my two cents.
Rene

Hello

Another answer from my post at Yahoo psr style forum. Message #17251
http://www.home.zonnet.nl/JosMaas/oneman

Scott Langholff

Hello

Here's what Bob Gelman from the Yahoo psr styles forum has to say:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yamaha-psr-styles/messabe/17258

Hello Group
I too can see the value of a large built-in storage device as I'm going crazy trying to organize all the downloads I have onto floppy disks.
I checked out the site in question a few nights ago and found a page showing full installation instructions for a Yamaha PSR 1000 with step by step pictures and instructions. It appears that you would have to install the device yourself. You open your keyboard, disconnect the ribbon and power cables to the floppy and install this hard drive next to the floppy and hook the cables to it. Then you jumper these to the floppy, attach a plug that sticks out of the case at the front, then close it up and plug in the remote gadget. It didn't appear very complicated but I stopped when it mentioned hooking up the 220v power supply. There is always a difference in Europe/Asia to North America and this could be a potential problem. It also sets up as numerous 1.44mb floppies so you would have to have a corresponding chart of folder numbers and file numbers to find anything. I think I'll wait for a keyboard that comes with a hard drive.

Brian

PSR users:

This is old ancient history. I had a box with a few hundred floppies 6 or 7 years ago when I first started collecting styles. I was quite interested in the subject, needless to say. I now own a 9000 with a SCSI CD, and a SCSI ZIP250 attached (plus an internal Hard Drive in the PSR). That solved the problem. It really is the only solution, other than having a notebook PC next to your PSR and manually transferring, via the floppy drive, styles.

No, you can't send styles over the MIDI port. No, you can't outfit a larger floppy into the PSR (the driver for the floppy will not, in fact, address YOUR PSR. You will make this discovery when you bust your PSR floppy drive and try to put in any old $20 drive from a PC. They don't work. I asked a Yamaha Tech: I'm told it's not a propriatery drive, it's just that each PSR OS has a floppy driver only for a particular model of floppy drive (not a "Yamaha" drive"). If you can't find the same model FD that you already own you're out of luck unless you buy one from Yamaha (who apparently stock them).

An outfit called "Lion" in Italy made a "MEGAFLOPPY" (very similar to the Ukrainian device) many years ago (at least 6). I was only able to find a single person on the net who had bought one, and he was very very unhappy with it. The guys in Italy didn't read/write in English and his emails went unanswered. The device was very noisy and really didn't work at all (I was told). This buyer couldn't even get his money back.

So, the Ukrainian "virtual HD" might work to some degree, but it really isn't a solution to the problem. I think the $150 would be better spent on an old notebook PC. Of course, you can always buy a PSR-8000/9000 or Tyros. But that's a pretty expensive solution for many of us. The notebook PC is a lot cheaper, and you get a computer to use too!

Cheers,

Bob


Hello

I have quite a discussion going on this over at SynthZone:
http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum37/HTML/005059.html

Scott Langholff--- In yamaha-psr-styles@y..., "Bob Gelman"
wrote:
> We had at least one member (in Russia) verify that these
actually exist
> (he saw one working that a friend had, as I recall). I do not
think any of
> our members own one of these. They are rather clumsy compared with
the HD
> that the bigger PSR's use. They are really a substitute for
> carrying/gathering a large number of floppy discs.
>
> A better solution, in my opinion, is to get an older cheap
laptop with a
> HD of a few Gb. Using Peter's PSR Style Database program on the PC
and
> "manually" moving styles from the laptop to the PSR via a
transferred floppy
> disk is a more elegant solution, with a high storage capacity.
>
> Or, of course, buy a bigger PSR that has the capacity for a HD.
>
> One more possibility: We've recently been told by several
members that
> you can sucessfully interface (no floppy transfers at all!!!) an
> older/smaller PSR with a PC using the OneManBand program. As it is
> shareware it is certainly worth checking out for this purpose!!!!
>
> SEE: http://www.svpworld.com/psr_software.htm
>
> How would you possibly find anything with this Ukrainian
device? You'd
> have to keep very good records of what's where on the HD! I believe
it only
> displays Volume/Disk numbers (not folder or style names) ....
>
> Cheers,
>
> Bob
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: scott_langholff
> To:
> Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 6:44 PM
> Subject: [yamaha-psr-styles] Hard drive found for PSR's that
normally don't
> have that option.
>
>
> > Hello
> >
> > I have found a company that produces hard drives for Yamaha PSR
> > models that were not made with that option. Does anybody have any
> > info or experience with this device and company? They are from
> > Ukraine (Russia)
> >
> > http://www.2av.com.ua/indexe.htm
> >
> > Thanx
> >
> > Scott Langholff
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >
> >


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PS:

I corresponded with Oliver at Musitronics when the 2000 first came out. He advised that there was no way his USB device could be "changed" by him to work with the 2000 (or the 740/640, 730/630, etc., etc.).

Hi Bob
With all due respect, this device is very different than either the MegaFloppy (junk) or the Musictronics USB devices (great). This device is really just a hard drive that is partitioned up to appear as individual floppies to the PSR2000. The PSR "thinks" it is looking at a floppy drive, only it has the speed and built-in convenience of a hard drive. I really think it's a very good idea. No, it doesn't behave exactly like a regular hard drive. But is sounds like a big improvement over swapping floppies.
Tom G.

I saw that the adres of my website was mentioned but incomplete, so here is the right address:
http://www.home.zonnet.nl/JosMaas/onemanband/index.htm

It is true that this is the software solution for your data storage problems. You can load and store stylesfiles. The number is only limited by the size of your PC hard disk. The size of the styles is only limited by the size of the of your PC's internal memory. That might be 20 GB versus 1.4 MB on a PSR diskette and 256 MB versus 64 kB on an avarage PSR!

What One Man Band does, is take over the arranger task of your PSR. So you will be using your PSR as master keyboard, sound module and speaker system. But in between is OMB running on your PC. You wil have to connect your PSR to a PC. And you must get accustomed to the keyboard interface that substitutes the buttons on your PSR. But the advantages are huge. In fact I dare to say that without OMB your floppy equiped keyboard is not suitable for playing external Yamaha styles! I know from a Yamaha PSR740 user that there is no quality loss between the PSR740 stand alone and the PSR740 working with OMB.

You don't realy need a PSR with OMB. It can be a Roland or Casio or even a digital piano using the PC soundcard as sound device. But it will sound best if the sound device is a XG (Yamaha) compatible device since most of the styles use XG bank variations and will sound best on a XG device.

The best way to find out what it does is to download a copy now, install it, read the helpfile chapter "Getting started" and start working with it. If your already have your keyboard connected to a PC then the total time for all this is about 30 minutes. You can try it before registering. Registration is $29.95 and that includes the upgrade for the next version that will appear in a few monts time. If there are things you would like to have added/improved then let me know. I already added and changed a lot of things on suggestions from users.

Regards,

Jos Maas

I went into the office yesterday and contacted a friend of mine from Russia to translate the web pages for the internal hard drive. It comes with an external controller with a 2 digit display. When "00" is displayed it acts like the original hard drive or floppy drive on the 2000. Any number greater is the "virtual" floppy drive in its internal memory. This would allow the apearance of having 99 different floppies stored inside the machine.
There were no technical specification on how to hook it up only operating instructions (pressing the 2 buttons to go down or up on the counter). That means if you need disk 99 you have to press the up button 99 times to get there. Pressing the 2 buttons at the same time returns it to zero.

My friend said he would provide a complete translation of the site and documents for me but I told him the information based on his verbal translation was not what I was looking for anyway.

TomTomSF,
I suspected what you had written about the devices. The Russian device uses a hardware based solution to fool the PSR OS into thinking it is the same floppy device it has always worked with. It still thinks it is limited to 1.44K. Pretty clever solution in a way.

I looked at floppy drives (for replacements) and regular ones cost from about $7 and up. I don't know what connectors it uses IDE, SCSI, USB, etc. So I'm not sure what kind of connector could be used to connect a PC to that to fool it using software to a PC.
Without changing the operating system or knowing how the hardware is configured inside it is hard to determine what to do.
My friend from Russia told me there are a lot of scam people in Russia (he just returned from a trip from there) and the black market for software/hardware is very large there as well. From the site itself it seems to be ok on the surface but did not go into any detail related to the 2000 which is what I was looking for in the first place.
I read the Styles Groups report and it seems that it is a valid thing to do and makes sense. The question and answer part was extremely informative especially with the pictures. I recommend everyone looking at message 16178 (mentioned above).
If anyone gets it let us know. This is quite the thread and is building up a lot of anticipation. My floppy collection of Midi/Karaoke/Styles/etc. is growing daily.
Does it change any warranty information on the machine if you open it up and start soldering things inside? Make sure you ground yourself first before doing stuff like this!

Keep the information coming. This is great.

- Brian

As a Mega Floppy dealer[Lion's Tracks], I still have two Mega Floppy's left.They were installed as demo units in a Farfisa G7 and a Korg i3,,my original cost was over $300 each..If someone is interested , email me with an offer. They are discontinued[USA interest was poor],so support is limited,although Domenic [boss at Lion's Tracks] always responded when I needed tech info. Fran

I got a reply back from Germany concerning the HDM.

The person replying didn't speak good English, and he didn't answer a principle question regarding 110 voltage for American keyboards.

The price he quoted me was higher than the price at the site. I think with shipping we were talking about close to $200. I might go for it. He told me that the product had a year warranty. I don't know what this means though when your dealing with individuals who can in theory do whatever they want once they get your money.

I might bite. We'll see.

Beakybird

Hey Beaky

If you need a go between I think Bob Gelman from Yahoo psr styles forum said he knew a Russian that would translate.

Scott Langholff

Hi Larry (Beaky),

Anxious to hear news about the HDM 110 voltage compatibility. Until at least this is resolved, I (personally) wouldn't risk it. Please keep us updated. - Scotty

For Jos Maas
I downloaded your ONE MAN BAND program, and it seems nice. Perhaps I will buy it.

You said it will sound best if the sound device is a XG (Yamaha) compatible device. If we have a PSR, no problem, it is a XG. If we have only a simple midi keyboard, we need to have a softsynth YXG50 or better YXG100 loaded into PC.

But, if we have a Roland, Korg, etc. arranger keyboard with a not XG sound module built in, what do you think will be the best way to work?:
1. To download YXG100 or something like that, and use it for both arrangement and right hand melody, not using the keyboard sound module.
2. Use sound module built in the keyboard, because it will have probably better sounds.

In both cases, how we must adjust midi-in and midi-out settings?

Regards, and congratulations. Your OMD is a great idea, but perhaps YAMAHA doesn't like it!!!

Hi,

If you have a Korg or Roland or whatever with good sounds and enough polyphony, then I would use that. I didn't try the Yamaha software synths but I have read at their website that they have a delay between the time you press the key and the time you hear the sound. That doesn't work in a live performance.

Any style or midifile will always sound best with the original instruments that it was made with. But even within XG you will have small difference if you play a style made on a PSR2000, on a PSR640. I wouldn't worry much about that. I get quite a nice result if I use the simple PCI64 card in my PC. The instruments don't sound like much if you play them individualy, but orchestrated together in the accompaniment and layered melody voices it is acceptable.

If you use one keyboard connected with midi-in and midi-out to the PC, then you just have to select the midi-in and midi-out port in the settings menu and that's it.

If you have an old vintage synth that has some great sounds you can throw that in as an extra. I would use channel 5 and 6 for extra devices in the melody multivoices. The channel for each voice can be specified in the voices window. If you are going to make styles in OMB than channel 7 and 8 would be best suitable for instruments on extra devices.

To direct the channels to the different devices there are several ways. If the extra device is a soundcard or software synth then use the midi mapper (windows configuration / multimedia) to specify which channel should be hooked to which device. If you have multiple midi-out ports, then you can also use the midi mapper. Otherwise you should connect your synths in a chain via midi-in and midi-through. Each synth must be programmed to receive only the channels that where meant for it. The keyboard you're playing on must be connected with midi-out to the PC midi-in.

If you encounter any problems or have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know.

Regards,

Jos