Kurzweil SCSI User Manual

KURZWEIL K2000/K2vx/K2500/K2600 SCSI HELP

The following document contains information on using SCSI with the
K2000/K2vx/K2500/K2600, as well as specific sections dealing with the using the
Kurzweil in a SCSI chain with your computer. For all info below, any reference to
the K2000 also applies to the K2vx

Basic SCSI Information:

Here are some basic guidelines to follow when configuring a SCSI chain:

1. Never, ever plug or unplug SCSI cables when your equipment is turned on.

SCSI cables carry power. The act of plugging or unplugging cables causes
momentary short circuits, which can result in damage to the internal circuitry of
your SCSI device. The only damage that usually occurs to SCSI hardware comes
from static electricity "zapping" SCSI connector pins when the cables are
disconnected. The silver colored shell of the SCSI connector on the end of the
cable is connected to ground and is safe to touch, but the brass colored pins
inside eventually lead to the SCSI interface chip and are vulnerable. One should
discharge static from one's body before touching SCSI connectors by touching
the 1/4" jacks on the rear of the Kurzweil or another grounded metal object. Any
devices connected to the SCSI bus should be turned off when plugging or
unplugging SCSI cables.

2. Including a minimum of 1 foot for internal cabling of each device in the chain,

the total length of the chain should not exceed 18 feet. There are some people
who suggest that you shouldn't go over 10 feet, but in our experience, if you use
good cables and follow the rules of SCSI, you can create a chain up to 18 feet in
length (which is what the SCSI specification says is allowed).

3. No single cable length in the chain should exceed 8 feet.

4. The first and last device in the chain must be terminated.

Poor termination is a common cause of SCSI problems. Having more than two
terminators on the bus will overload the bus drivers. This will not cause
permanent damage to the hardware. However, poor termination can corrupt the
data on your disk.

There are two "exceptions" to this rule. If the chain is less than 18 inches only 1
terminator is needed. If the chain is 10 feet or more, the chain may need to be
terminated at the 10 feet point, using a pass through terminator. The reason that
we say you "may need" to do this is that we have found that some people don't
seem to require a third terminator, while others can't get a longer SCSI chain to
work without one.

The Kurzweil comes internally terminated, and so you will normally want it to be
on one end of the chain. The K2000 keyboard must be at the end of the chain
since it has only one SCSI port. (If you are hooked up in a chain with a computer,

the computer will always be the other end of the chain.) If you need to have the
Kurzweil in the middle of the chain, the termination must be removed. This
should be done by an authorized service center. In the case of the K2000, it
involves removing termination resistors. In the case of the K2500, there are
several different possibilities - some have termination resistors that must be
removed, others have jumpers that get moved. The newest K2500s and all
K2600s have a termination switch on the back, so you can disable termination
yourself.

If you install an internal drive in the Kurzweil, termination must be removed from
the Kurzweil. If the Kurzweil is at the end of the chain, termination resistors
should be removed from the K2000 and the termination left on the internal drive.
This makes the drive at the end of the chain. If you install an internal drive and
the Kurzweil is in the middle of the chain, termination must be removed from both
the Kurzweil and the drive. If you add an internal drive and the Kurzweil is not
hooked to any other devices, termination should still be removed from the
Kurzweil. (See the rule about a chain less than 18 inches, above.)

Note: For the K2500 keyboard models, if you install an internal drive, the SCSI
through port will not work and you must hook up only to the main SCSI port.
Therefore, in this case the Kurzweil can only be at the end of the chain.

External drives may or may not be internally terminated. If a drive is not
terminated and is on the end of the chain, you can purchase an external
termination clip, which plugs onto the second SCSI port (most drives will have
two ports). Some drives also have an automatic termination feature - if you only
have a single SCSI cable plugged in, the drive terminates itself, but if you plug in
a second SCSI cable, termination is turned off.

5. Use only true SCSI cables - high quality, twisted pair, shielded SCSI cable. Do

not use RS232 or other non SCSI cables.
The majority of SCSI cables we've tested were poorly made and could cause

damage to data transferred to and from the disk. Nearly all the SCSI data
problems Young Chang's engineering department has had have been due to bad
cables that didn't twist pairs of wires properly. Cables made by APS
Technologies (800-233-7550) are very good and are highly recommended. Good
cables that use twisted pairs of wires and twist each SCSI signal wire with a
ground wire are essential to reliable data transfers to and from the disk drive.

6. Impedance mismatching between cables from different manufacturers can

cause problems. Avoid this when possible by getting all your cables from the
same manufacturer.

7. Each device in the chain (including internal hard drives) must have its own

unique SCSI ID. For the SCSI1 and SCSI2 protocols, there are 8 ID numbers (0-

7). For SCSI3, there are 16 ID numbers. The Kurzweil is SCSI1 and SCSI2
compatible. If you have a SCSI3 device, it should be backwards compatible with
SCSI1 and SCSI2, but you should make sure to set the ID numbers to 0-8 if you

want the Kurzweil to be able to access that device. The default Kurzweil ID is #6.
Macintoshes use ID 7 and SCSI cards for PCs are also normally set at 7. The
internal drive of a computer is normally set at 0. For an external drive, there will
usually be an external switch which allows you to choose the ID, although with
some drives, it may have to be done by opening the drive and changing jumper
pins. Most drives will allow you to choose any ID, although there are some which
limit your choices - for example the Zip drive only gives you the choice of 5 or 6.

You can change the SCSI ID of the Kurzweil on the MIDI Receive page, but we
recommend leaving it at 6 and changing your other devices if needed, since each
time you hard reset the Kurzweil, it returns to 6. If you forget to change it after a
reset and have a SCSI ID conflict, you can lock up your SCSI chain and forget
the reason why.

One thing to watch out for if having a hard drive installed in the Kurzweil - many
fixed drives come set with their default at 6 (the same as the Kurzweil). Make
sure your service tech knows to set the ID to a different number (this is normally
done by moving jumper pins on the drive). One curious side effect of this problem

- if the internal drive is set to the same number as the Kurzweil and you have
nothing else in the SCSI chain, then you will see the drive show up on every ID
except for its own (the Kurzweil shows up on that ID, since it is also on the ID).

If you do have more than one device with the same ID, the Kurzweil may lock up
when you scroll through the SCSI numbers in Disk mode, or if you are in a chain
with a computer, it may not boot up at all.

If you have more than one Kurzweil, they can be on the same chain and both be
able to access any drive in the chain (though not at the same time). Make sure to
change the ID on one of them.

If you are having problems getting the Kurzweil to see a device on the chain,
sometimes just changing its ID to a different number may fix the problem, even
there was no device ID conflict before. There is no logic to this phenomenon - it's
just another SCSI weirdness.

As a general rule, we recommend only changing the ID of a drive when the
system is powered off. It is possible (although unlikely) that data could be
corrupted if the ID of a drive is changed while it is turned on.

8. Theoretically all eight SCSI IDs can be used, however, we often hear of users

having problems with more than 5 IDs. This may be more of a result of not
following all the other rules (especially concerning cables), but some SCSI
devices seem to be picky.

We have also gotten reports from users who state that they can only get their
SCSI chain to work when their devices are hooked up in a specific order. Other
than having the two ends of the chain terminated, order should not matter, and
yet it does for some people. This may be due to impedance variations in the
various units, varying internal cable lengths, etc. The bottom line is that if you are

having problems getting your chain to work and you have followed all the other
rules, try changing the order of the devices.

9. If the Kurzweil is in a chain with the computer, power up the Kurzweil and

other devices before booting up the computer. Some people report that they can't
get their computer to boot up if the Kurzweil or other devices are turned off, while
others are able to do this. Your best bet is to have everything turned on.

10. Like with any disk that is read to and written from many times, the data on a
Kurzweil disk can become fragmented. If the disk becomes severely fragmented,
there is a chance that the file allocation table can become corrupted and some or
all of the files unreadable. For this reason, we recommend that every so often
you back up all your data to another drive and reformat your disk. Or, if the disk
was formatted in DOS from a computer (see below), you can run a program such
as Norton Utilities on a PC and optimize (defragment) the disk. For Mac users,
this is not an option - Norton for the Mac won't work with a DOS formatted disk,
even if you have a DOS mounting utility.

Using the Kurzweil in a chain with your computer:

1.

SCSI was never designed originally for the concept of having more than
master on the chain. Therefore, the computer assumes that it is always in charge
of the chain, and the SCSI bus is always free for it to take control. The Kurzweil
will act as a slave until you go to Disk mode and select one of the functions; at
that point, the Kurzweil tries to take control of the chain. If the computer tries to
access the chain while the Kurzweil is in control, the computer and the Kurzweil
are both likely to lock up, and your only solution will be to reboot both devices. It
is even possible that data on a disk may be corrupted when this happens
(although this is less likely).

To prevent the computer from accessing the chain when you don't want it to, you
should make sure to turn off and/or disable screen savers, email, network file
sharing, and any INITs or TSR's that run in the background - anything that might
cause the computer to access the SCSI chain, even if it is the computer's own
internal hard drive. For the PC, if your main internal drive is an IDE instead of a
SCSI drive, you won't have to worry about accesses to that drive. But it is still
wise to make sure you have nothing in your system that would cause the PC to
access SCSI when you aren't touching it.

If you only occasionally need to have the computer hooked to the Kurzweil, you
are best off plugging and unplugging it from the chain, to prevent the potential
problems described above. But if you do need to have it in the chain regularly,
one solution is to get a SCSI switcher. This box allows you to switch back and
forth between specific connections without having to power off your units and
plug or unplug cables.

Because of the potential hassles, you may want to consider whether you really
need to have the Kurzweil in the chain with the computer. There are a few
reasons why you would need to have it in the chain:

A. You are using a sample editor, such as Alchemy, Recycle, or Sound
Forge, which allows you to send samples back and forth between the
Kurzweil and software via SCSI.
B. You have a removable media drive and want to use it for both the
Kurzweil and the computer (with separate cartridges for each device).

C. You want to use the computer for reorganizing or renaming files.
D. You want to use the computer for backing up data from a drive which

holds your Kurzweil files. This is especially useful since the computer can
access SCSI devices much faster than the Kurzweil (depending on drive
speed). It also allows you to use backup devices not supported by the
Kurzweil, such as DAT backup drives.

2. Lets talk about these last couple of situations. While the Kurzweil floppy format

is DOS, the SCSI disk format varies depending on the instrument and its
operating system. For the K2600, starting with version 2, we have implemented
full support for FAT-16 DOS. This allows you to work with drives up to 8 Gig,
formatted in 2 gig partitions. We recommend that the drive be formatted by the
Kurzweil, but it will also recognize drives formatted by a PC. Both the Mac and
PC will be able to read a Kurzweil formatted disk without problems

For the K2000, K2500, and K2600 with 1 , the SCSI disk format is not a true
DOS format. It is very similar to DOS, but does not fully follow the DOS
specification (it does not support partitions). Therefore, your computer may or
may not be able to recognize a SCSI disk formatted by the Kurzweil. (Some
SCSI drivers for the PC and some Macintosh DOS compatibility utilities do
recognize our format - more on this in the sections on platform specific issues.)

However, if you have a K2000 with version 3 or later or a K2500/K2600 (any
version), it can read and write to a DOS formatted disk. Because we do not
support disk partitions, if the drive is formatted with partitions, the Kurzweil will
only see the first partition.

Although we recommend formatting the drive on the Kurzweil if you have a
K2600 with v2 or later, for all other versions, we strongly recommend that you
format any Kurzweil drives in DOS, even if your computer is able to recognize
our format. Even though the software may recognize our format, there could be
subtle problems that arise in certain situations, since the computer thinks the
drive is a true DOS formatted drive when in fact it isn't. If you have a drive that is
already formatted by the Kurzweil, we recommend you backup your data and
reformat the drive in DOS from the computer.

3. Even when your computer can read a disk with Kurzweil files on it, the

Kurzweil file format itself is a proprietary format, so the computer can't do
anything with the file besides rename it and move it around. However, these two
features can be very handy, especially if you need to reorganize a complex file
hierarchy.