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/
> >
> >
> >


------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Share the magic of Harry Potter with Yahoo! Messenger http://us.click.yahoo.com/4Q_cgB/JmBFAA/46VHAA/QnLolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->



Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

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