Modernization tactics

[crochambeau]

So, in the spring of 2025 I picked up an Akai S2000 sampler. For those who are unaware, this device requires a system boot disk in order to operate. A boot disk was provided with the sampler, but I was not able to get it to successfully format additional floppy disks, and was therefore in the position of being unable to save work. So I shelved it.

Earlier this month I purchased a ZuluSCSI RP2040 Mini, which is a 25 pin plug in SCSI hard drive emulator. This was specifically in order to bring the S2000 online. Upon arrival, I flashed HDD images to an SD card, slapped that onto the S2000 and powered the fucker up. In the intervening months, either the OS floppy or the floppy disk drive had suffered a silent death.

Apparently, copying or writing an OS disk outside of the Akai environment involves both tedious tasks and vintage hardware. I could cough up even more money to buy an OS disk, but that was not very compelling, as since I had been unable to format a disk I suspected the root issue may not be confined to the floppy.

So I opted instead to flash a Gotek over to Flash Floppy, drop the image of the S2000 OS into a thumb drive, and use that to wake the machine up. After some fumbling around in the configuration files I wound up with a powered up and ready to go sampler!

From there, it was just a matter of saving a copy of the OS to the first volume on the hard drive image addressed to SCSI channel 5, and now I can power it up and boot load without needing a thumb drive in the Gotek.

Some things specific to the S2000:

SCSI HDD size limit is 500MB, and each of those is chopped up into partitions no larger than 60MB.
SCSI channel 5 is the "hard wired" default drive, so if you're looking to boot from the HDD instead of the floppy, the OS needs to be in the 1st partition of SCSI channel 5.