Dealing with an Akai S950 and floppies on Windows XP

[dreaddd]

it was ages i wasnt switching on the sampler, but this time i needed to do some things for a live gig and realized (never did before under XP) that akaidisk works no more under this environment (i was stuck on Win 98/ME till about 3 yrs ago, so i never experienced this before, as it was even more that i wasnt using HW samplers..)
so, before trying desperation-driven attempts to do wrong things to manage to get it done...
what would you think id need to do to read and write programs AND samples with Akai S950 disks?
i thought about setting the 98 compatibility with the exe but didnt work (tho i m a noob)
other solution may be doing a sort of bootable 98 system on floppies, boot from there and run akaidisk thru that...so far no luck...i even installed NTFSDOS to let it read NTFS partitions , still no way i managed to make it work (assuming tho, that here i did some craps, hence ill try again hopefully tonight..)

am i missing some EASIER solution?
anyone aware of different strategies that are quickly settable?
im stuck in a rut ATM and i need those damn floppies to be read and written before tomorrow's end..

Peace

[jupiter8]

Check out Omniflop.
http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm
It's recomended on the Awave site.

[dreaddd]

Check out Omniflop.
http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm
It's recomended on the Awave site.

thx Jupiter8, already grabbed it yesterday, but didnt work so far
ill give a run again, anyway...thx as well!

Peace

[annode]

Here's some ppl talking about it;
http://www.em411.com/show/blog/959/1/ju ... ments_list

And...
http://mda.smartelectronix.com/akai/akaifaqs.htm

http://mda.smartelectronix.com/akai/index.htm

Don't know if any of this will help.

[bluelife]

Had the same problem with an EPS sampler. I had to set up a small fat16 or 32 partition and then use a program under DOS. Win wouldn't rite or read non DD disks.
HAve u looked at chicken translator, I think it has a utilitly, blue

[dreaddd]

Had the same problem with an EPS sampler. I had to set up a small fat16 or 32 partition and then use a program under DOS. Win wouldn't rite or read non DD disks.
HAve u looked at chicken translator, I think it has a utilitly, blue

hi guys

thanx for the help...
i managed to setup all the stuff on a mesozoic-age laptop i had around, so far it seems to have worked, but when checkin the floppies theyre like unreadable from akaidisk...going nuts here---
cant wait to get back home and check if actually the sampler is able to read em or not

Translator uses the same akaidisk app, sadly ....but thx as well for all the help and suggestion to you both

Peace

[kritikon]

Doesn't something like Extreme Sample Converter (or whatever it's called) convert them to something readable? Have you got SCSI on the 950? If not, not sure if you can get hold of the SCSI boards anymore, but you might be able to get one, then load the samples into the 950 via floppy, transfer them out via SCSI into the PC and use sample converter to store them etc. I never got the digital board fitted, so I can't remember what connections they used, but there might also have been more than just SCSI.

Can't think of any other apps that convert AKAI floppies off the top of my head, but there must be something surely - there are a few that convert even thing like Atari files into PC readable files, must be something for AKAI.


You kept all your floppies?!

Threw mine away years ago. I should sell the 950 too, but I doubt I'd find anyone remotely interested for more than $1.50. Costs more than that to post the bugger.

[FaX]

Doesn't something like Extreme Sample Converter (or whatever it's called) convert them to something readable? Have you got SCSI on the 950? If not, not sure if you can get hold of the SCSI boards anymore, but you might be able to get one, then load the samples into the 950 via floppy, transfer them out via SCSI into the PC and use sample converter to store them etc. I never got the digital board fitted, so I can't remember what connections they used, but there might also have been more than just SCSI.

Can't think of any other apps that convert AKAI floppies off the top of my head, but there must be something surely - there are a few that convert even thing like Atari files into PC readable files, must be something for AKAI.


You kept all your floppies?!

Threw mine away years ago. I should sell the 950 too, but I doubt I'd find anyone remotely interested for more than $1.50. Costs more than that to post the bugger.

If you where in Australia and it had the full RAM expansion I'd be interested and then some to be brutally honest.

[dreaddd]

Doesn't something like Extreme Sample Converter (or whatever it's called) convert them to something readable? Have you got SCSI on the 950? If not, not sure if you can get hold of the SCSI boards anymore, but you might be able to get one, then load the samples into the 950 via floppy, transfer them out via SCSI into the PC and use sample converter to store them etc. I never got the digital board fitted, so I can't remember what connections they used, but there might also have been more than just SCSI.

Can't think of any other apps that convert AKAI floppies off the top of my head, but there must be something surely - there are a few that convert even thing like Atari files into PC readable files, must be something for AKAI.


You kept all your floppies?!

Threw mine away years ago. I should sell the 950 too, but I doubt I'd find anyone remotely interested for more than $1.50. Costs more than that to post the bugger.

yo! thx for the suggestions, problem is that i need to put the samples on a S950 formatted floppy, using as start source some wavs, and ESC cant do that..
the only chance left is the MIDI transfer i fear, since tho having a SCSI connection on the sampler, afaik on the old akais they were only aimed for external drives (and particular ones either , since anyway the old Akais dont recognize anything bigger than, if i remember correctly, 44 megas..ie the Syquest drives that were widely used at the time)
i have like 400 floppies with all my past libraries, since i was anyway convinced that i could easily do the translation task anytime, when needed, as i wasnt aware of akaidisk not working on anything developed after Win98SE on win environment (and i switched to XP only 3-4 yrs ago, while quit using the old akai like 5-6 yrs ago)..not worried about that anyway, even if ill need to do that sooner or later..
actual problem is only converting samples for 2-3 tracks for a live gig im about doing with my old band (after 10 yrs we split...) right next saturday..
we lately discovered that the old floppies were having problems, hence the need to make new copies from the samples backup i had on the pc..
BTW dont think its unsellable..i saw many already (even lately) going for sale even for more than 100 euros when with every extra board fitted
i wont ever sell mine because for that amount of money, my heart would cry for that after the shitload of money i put on it to buy it more than 10 yrs ago
back on the topic..i think i ll need to try the PITA of MIDI transfer, just for these 2-3 trax...jeeeeeeeeez midi transfer is soooooooooo booooooooooring
thx for the hints and tips anyway, much appreciated
Peace

[dreaddd]

UPDATE

i even sent an email to the dev of Akaidisk if he can confirm that there's no workaround trick left
last news: i managed to find a win 98 machine...i installed akaidisk and does like that:
if i try to format akai floppies it goes nuts...the results including sample transfers are showing an unformatted disk to my akai..
if i put a preformatted akai disk (formatted thru the sampler i mean) it seems to work in this way (beware, this is friggin' surreal...) : all readable by the akai, though : half sample is sounding right the other half seem to be distorted and programmed by Aphex Twin ..like VVVVVVVRRRRRRRRTUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU ZONGGGGGGGGGGGG
this for EVERY transferred sample!!!
this is NOT science its goddamn black magic

[kritikon]

Midi transfer

See you in about 6 years, then.

If you where in Australia and it had the full RAM expansion I'd be interested and then some to be brutally honest.

Well, it's got the full RAM, but can't do the other half of the equation I'm afraid. Still, what's a couple of thousand km or so?

[matt milton]

Reviving this ancient thread to ask: what is the easiest way in 2023 to get about 300 floppy disks of Akai S950 samples into a format I could use with a software sampler? I want to get rid of my old S950 but for sentimental reasons I'd quite like to be able to keep all the samples I made a few decades ago...

[BertKoor]

Reviving this ancient thread to ask: what is the easiest way in 2023 to get about 300 floppy disks of Akai S950 samples into a format I could use with a software sampler? I want to get rid of my old S950 but for sentimental reasons I'd quite like to be able to keep all the samples I made a few decades ago...

Getting a floppy disk drive for a modern computer, plus software that can actually handle the vendor-specific format, is going to be a tall order.

imho your best bet is to pray your S950 still works, hook it up with a MIDI cable to a computer, and transfer the samples via midi. Record it with a midi sequencer that records sysex information, and save it as a midi file, which then must be processed somehow to extract the raw sample data. But that is going to be very slow and lots of labour.

More basic and fool-proof solution (thx to the late Steve Hollow) is to hook up the audio outs of the sampler into audio in of your computer audio interface, and just sample the sample in all its 12-bit glory.

[whyterabbyt]

Reviving this ancient thread to ask: what is the easiest way in 2023 to get about 300 floppy disks of Akai S950 samples into a format I could use with a software sampler? I want to get rid of my old S950 but for sentimental reasons I'd quite like to be able to keep all the samples I made a few decades ago...

I came across a 2013 post elsewhere which said 'Awave Studio' reads .AKAI images created from S950 floppies with Omniflop.'

AWave just went to V12, and Omniflop still exist... You can still get FDDs drives...


https://www.amazon.co.uk/External-Porta ... 160&sr=8-3

Maybe contact FMJsoft and confirm whether they still support S950 floppies first...