When I turn on my unit, the display says “About to Load Startup File”, and then switches to “Problems Loading Disk” or other error message.

Answer:

The problem is that the Startup parameter on the Disk Mode page has been enabled, set to a SCSI ID number, Floppy, or SMedia (K2661), and you do not have a Boot Macro on the specified disk. If you set it to Off, these messages will not show up when you turn on the unit.

A Boot Macro is located at the root level of a disk, which will load automatically when you turn on the unit. By setting the Startup parameter to a value other than Off, you cause the Kurzweil to look for a file called BOOT.MAC on the root level of the specified disk and load that file when you turn on the unit. If you have created a Boot Macro and still see these messages, check to make sure the Boot Macro is saved at the root level on your disk, and that Startup is set to the correct SCSI ID number of your drive (or to floppy, or SMedia if you are using those instead).

For more information on Macros and the Boot Macro, please see the “Using Macros” tutorial here. Additional information can also be found in the disk mode chapter of your manual.

Question:

What are the basic guidelines in using my K2 with SCSI devices?

Answer:

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 and K2661 keyboards must be at the end of the chain since they only have 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.) 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 we have encountered have been due to bad cables that didn’t twist pairs of wires properly. 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.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.
8. 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.
9. 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 you can run an optimizing/deframenting a program to maintain disk health.

Question:

How can I burn a CDROM of Kurzweil data for loading into my K2?

Answer:

If you want to burn your own CD-ROM for your Kurzweil, you will need to be aware of the following information:

For K2000 Series Models with version 3.87, or K2500 Series Models with version 2.88B (Non-KDFX) or 4.21B (KDFX) or later, or any K2600/2661 Series

These versions add support for ISO 9660, making it extremely easy to burn a CD-ROM. You should consult your CD-Writer software for instructions on how to burn a CD-ROM in ISO-9660 format. Of course, your computer will need to be able to read the disk that contains the data you want to burn on to the CD-ROM. There are a few rules you should be aware of for burning an ISO-9660 disk.

ISO9660 support key points:

• The Kurzweil OS supports CD-ROM XA (Mode 2) as well as CD-ROM (Mode 1)
• The Kurzweil OS supports multi-session CD’s, but some older CD-ROM drives may not support multi-session. In this case you will only see the first session.
• File naming conventions that work: ISO-9660 level 1, MS DOS, and Joliet.
• Do not select “use Macintosh extensions” when making ISO-9660 CD’s.
• Do not select “append version numbers” when making ISO-9660 CD’s.
• The maximum “path-length” (total file name, including directory names and slashes) is 63 characters, which means that files in highly nested directories may not be loadable.
• Unicode characters do not display correctly.

For All K2000 and K2500 Series Models with older OS versions

These older versions don’t support the ISO-9660 format, which is often used by computers. So to burn a CD, you must make a disk image copy of the DOS or Kurzweil formatted source disk that has your files. In essence, you will need to have another drive which is used as “staging” drive. By making a disk image copy, you copy sector by sector the exact format and data on the staging drive.

There are a couple of issues to be aware of. First of all, if you have a drive on which you have been constantly loading files, editing them, and resaving them back to the disk, you are likely to have a fair amount of disk fragmentation. Although not necessarily essential, it is recommended that the staging drive be defragmented. If the disk is currently in DOS format (instead of being formatted by the Kurzweil), you can use disk utilities program to defragment the disk. If the disk is in Kurzweil format, or you don’t have a disk utility program, then the solution is to use the Kurzweil to backup all the data to another drive, reformat your staging drive, then restore the data to the staging drive using the Backup or Copy functions.

The second issue concerns drive size. If your staging drive is less than the maximum size of a CD-ROM (650 Mb), then you can simply make the disk image copy. But if the staging drive is larger than 650 Mb, then you need to be able to only copy a certain portion of the staging drive. In this case, defragmenting the drive is absolutely essential. Since a disk image copy simply copies data sector by sector, without regard to what is in those sectors, all of the data for your CD must be contained within the first 650 Mb of sectors on the disk. Also, your CD-ROM burning software will need to have the ability to copy only a specified part of the staging drive when doing a disk image copy. You will want to consult your CD-ROM burning software to find out how to burn a disk image copy.

K2x00 CD-ROM Image Maker is a freeware program for the PC, created by Bernard Perbal, which allows you to create a disk image file.

Question:

What SCSI CDROM and other removable drives are compatible for use with my K2?

Answer:

The K2 series supports the use of SCSI-1 or SCSI-2 compatible devices. SCSI drive compatibility and capacity issues have been improved during the lifetimes of these products. To have the best possible compatibility, we strongly recommend downloading and installing the current version of the Operating system if you have a K2500, K2600 or K2661.

For K2000/K2vx owners, who must purchase the update and have it installed by a service center, we strongly recommend updating if you have a version prior to 3.52.

CD-ROMs – Most are compatible. One exception is NEC drives – most older NEC drives will not work, although some newer NEC drives were reported to work. Problems have also been reported with the Plextor 12x CD-ROM.

• For versions of the K2000 3.18 or earlier and the K2500 2.13 or earlier, drives must be able to support 512 bytes per sector. Drive mechanisms from the following manufacturers are known to support this format: Sony, Toshiba, Chinon, Plextor, Aiwa, and Matsushita. (Chinon drives not compatible with a K2000 with v2 or earlier.) Faster speed may not work in these older versions of the OS – you may have to look for an older, slower speed drive.

CD-ROM Speed – Most of the newer, faster drives will work, but will not perform any faster than slower models.

• For the K2600, and the K2500 starting with v2.52, drives up to 8x will perform faster than a slower version. Drives faster than 8x will function correctly but not perform faster.
• For the K2000 with v3.87, drives up to 4x will perform faster than a slower version. Drives faster than 4x will function correctly but not perform faster.
• For versions of the K2000 previous to 3.87, and versions of the K2500 previous to 2.52, drives faster than 2x will not perform any faster than a 2x drive.

Writeable CD-ROMs – supported in later versions of the operating system for reading disks only. You can’t burn a CD from the Kurzweil. Our page on Burning a CD-ROM disk contains more details.

• Supported for the K2600, the K2500 with versions 2.88 or higher, and K2000 version 3.87.
• Not supported for versions of the K2500 previous to 2.88 or the K2000 previous to 3.87.

Iomega (Bernoulli, Zip, and JAZ) – Compatible. However, these drives are designed so that they go to sleep if the cartridge is not accessed after a specified time.

• For versions of the K2000 3.18 or earlier and the K2500 2.13 or earlier, this auto sleep function will cause the Kurzweil to lock up, either immediately or when Load is pressed. To avoid this problem, eject the disk when not in use. This prevents the drive from going into sleep mode, and therefore prevents the lockup.

Syquest – Compatible.

Orb – Compatible

Magneto Opticals – Most 230 Meg drives and cartridges are compatible. Media must be hard formatted as 512 bytes per sector. Larger drives use a format of 1024 or greater bytes per sector and therefore will not work.

Tape Based Drives – Not supported.

Question:

I have a Kurzweil format CD-ROM. I put it into my computer and received a message saying it could not read the disk.

Answer:

There are two problems with putting the CD in your computer:

1. The first is that initially in their development, the K2 series units (K2000+K2500) did not support the ISO-9660 format, which is often used by computers for a CD-ROM format. As most commercially available Kurzweil soundware CDROMs were created in these “early years”, your computer must be able to deal with a CD that is not in ISO-9660.
2. The second problem has to do with the formatting of the disk itself. The disk will be a disk image copy of the DOS or Kurzweil formatted source disk that originally contained the data. Our disk format is similar to but not fully implemented DOS. So if the disk was taken from a Kurzweil formatted source disk, the computer may or may not recognize that format, depending on the drivers or software running in your computer.

Note: For user-created disks made with a K2500 with an OS version 2.88 or later for non-KDFX units or 4.21 or later for KDFX units or with a K2600/2661:

Starting with these versions, we added support the ISO-9660 format, so if the disk was burned using IS0-9660, the computer should be able to read the disk. However, remember again that most commercially available CD-ROMs were created prior to the addition of this ability and instead were burned as disk image copies, so you are still likely to run into the situation described above.

Question:

What CDROM sample disks are suitable for use with the K2?

Answer:

Many 3rd party companies have released CDROMs in K2000/K2500/K2600 format. Please see our Developer Listing for info on some of these companies.

Aside from native titles, the K2 can also read Roland S series, Ensoniq EPS, and Akai S1000/3000 series, format CDROMs (version 3 or later required for the K2000). It is important to understand that with foreign formats, the samples and keymaps will be read, but not the other program information (envelopes, filter settings, modulation routings etc.). For a CDROM of loops, sound effects, or any file where there is little or no programming added to the sample, you will be able to obtain good results very easily – but for a CDROM file that has an extensive amount of programming, the samples will convert correctly but the programs may sound different. Some programming effort may be required to duplicate the programs as they were on the original sampler. Also, file loading times are slower for conversions from other formats. If given the choice between a native Kurzweil format CDROM or a foreign format disk, you will want to choose the Kurzweil disk.

In addition to prefabricated soundware titles, the K2 can also import raw .WAV and AIFF sample files. If you have a CDROM of .WAV or AIFF files, they are typically formatted in ISO-9660 format. If you have current versions of the operating system for your K2500 or K2000 or a K26000, you will be able to read these disk. Older versions (for the K2000 and K2500) do not support ISO-9660, but if you use your computer to copy the files from the CDROM to a DOS formatted disk, you will be able to read them.