Many years ago I bought a device that was already on the verge of being outdated. The storage space on it is pretty dismal, so I took the advice of the user manual and bought an external SCSI drive for more storage. The drive powers up, and the bootup of the device seems to recognize that something has been added, but can’t “see” the drive as anything addressable. I’ve followed all of the directions except one – to terminate the SCSI chain with a “terminator”, something that didn’t ship with the drive. The tech support people from whom I bought the drive (I got it through eBay) can’t tell me what to use, as they don’t know the make and model of the drive that I have. (Duh, check with your shipping depertment!)
The drive has absolutely no markings on it, not even a serial number.
What should I buy? The port looks like 25-pin, but it looks like there are connections on both sides of each pin, so maybe it’s 50-pin. It’s a “D” shaped port, maybe 3-ish inches wide.
Note that many drives have the ability to self-terminate. You might want to open the case and look at the drive, and see if the termination resistors are present on the drive itself, in which case all you need to do is to set the jumpers correctly.
The only 25-pin SCSI ports that I know of are DB25 (as used by Apple), so if it has pins ‘on both sides’ and is as big as you say it’s a 50-pin “Centronics” connector. Have a look at these to let us know which one you have.
Does the external enclosure have two ports on it, or just one? If it’s just one, the drive that was in there probably had built-in termination. Then you might need to replace the (internal) cable with one that lets you add a terminator.
The other thing I’d check is whether you can [re]format the drive using your device or it needs to be formatted before it’ll work. Also whether it’s picky about the SCSI ID.
I’ll need to compare the pictures with the actual unit when I get home, but so far it looks closest to the CN50.
There are two ports on the drive, so it looks like I just need to add the terminator. The manual says to set the ID as low as possible, so with only one drive it should be 0.
No idea if I need to format it, but I can’t find anything in the manual about it.
IIRC, SCSI ID 0 was reserved for the SCSI interface in the computer itself or its boot device, so a drive can’t be at 0. Try setting it at 2, and see how that goes.
I’m assuming you don’t have any other SCSI devices, so you won’t need to sort out contentions.
Nitpick: The host (PC) scsi interface is usually ID7 which is the highest priority. 0 should be fine. I think you might also need to know if the disk is what they call “Single Ended”, “Differential”, or “Low Voltage Differential”. You should really find out what make/model the drive is and post it here so we can help.
Feel free to pick nits as it’s been a few years since I’ve actually touched a SCSI device, and that was to chuck a pile of cables and terminators into the e-recycle bin.
tdn: Does Korg have any user manuals online for your particular keyboard? Hopefully they’d have info on using eternal drives. The eBay description on that drive at least indicated that it’s a Centronics 50 socket, aka CN50. Here’s a terminatorfor just over five bucks.
In my experience, an unterminated SCSI chain works just fine most of the time, unless you’ve got a real rats nest of cables and a bunch of drives. Your problem may not just be a termination problem. Then again, most of my SCSI experience was on vaxes and they were a lot more fault tolerant than PC equipment.
Check the jumpers for the drive. Some drives have built in terminators, but you have to set the jumpers to use them. If this drive is inside an enclosure, you’ll likely have to take the enclosure apart to get to the drive.
If you do need a terminator, look at the pictures in the link that beowulff posted to match up which connector type you have.
