Mackie HDR question for Mike

Federico wrote:

> my dear HDR is driving me mad.
> And it seems I can't buy your book online, wouldn't it be possible to buy it
> directly from you?

I don't have any to sell. Is Cafe Press not taking money from overseas
now? They used to. I've had a lot of sales to Europe. Perhaps some
helpful regular eBay trader who has a PayPal setup would buy one for you
and take a PayPal payment. There was a fellow on the Mackie forum who
did that for a lot of non-US owners who needed to buy parts from the US.
Go to the Mackie HDR or d8b forum and look for Steve T.

> I have an external HD I bought with the unit (used) and it works fine.
> I bought another HD (same brand, Hitachi, 80Gb) and I formatted it FAT32 in
> windows XP.
> Both my PC and my Apple G4 can see the HD when I connect it using a USB
> external bay.
> When I put this external HD in the HDR the HDR doesn't see it.

Does your HDR have the new BIOS ROM that accommodates larger disk
drives? If one 80 GB drive works, unless it has jumpers installed to
limit the capacity to 30 GB, then it has the new BIOS. Does the "time
remaining" show about 6 hours when the 80 GB drive is empty?

> The machine doesn't even load the program. It just try to find the secondary
> HD (it's NOT set as slave).
> The HDR says "press F4 to skip" but F4 won't work and I have to restart the
> HDR.

Did you use the new drive to replace the internal drive? If so, you need
to run the Mackie format program as well as the PC format. This puts a
boot sector loader on the disk so that the Mackie operating system (when
installed) will load.

> What I did (not in this order):
> 1) I checked the BIOS settings like the Mackie website told me to.
> 2) I tried to set the external HD both 15 head and 16 head.
> 3) I tried to format with FDisk putting the HD in the PC as IDE.
> 4) I tried to format with "CompuApps SwissKnife V3" the HD being in it's
> external tray.
> 5) I re-installed the Mackie program on the HDR.
> 6) I cried a bit.... but only a bit.

Did you edit the TOOLS.INI file on the Mackie installation disk #1,
changing the format line to format:on? When you do that and boot the
installation floppy, it will give you a prompt on the LCD asking if you
want to format the internal disk drive. Tell it yes and it will install
the boot loader. Then it will load the operating system, and if all is
OK, it should be an HDR again.


--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me here:
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
([email protected])

Thanks Mike, I'll check both SteveT and Cafč Press too.


> Does your HDR have the new BIOS ROM that accommodates larger disk drives?
> If one 80 GB drive works, unless it has jumpers installed to limit the
> capacity to 30 GB, then it has the new BIOS. Does the "time remaining"
> show about 6 hours when the 80 GB drive is empty?

I don't know which BIAS version I am equipped with but my "original"
external HD records 6+ hours @24bit/44.1KHz


> Did you use the new drive to replace the internal drive? If so, you need
> to run the Mackie format program as well as the PC format. This puts a
> boot sector loader on the disk so that the Mackie operating system (when
> installed) will load.

I didn't replace the internal drive. I just want to have a second external
HD.
When I turn the HDR on it finds the internal drive and then it stops,
seaching the external one without recognizing it. (that's when it says
"press F4 to skip).


> Did you edit the TOOLS.INI file on the Mackie installation disk #1,
> changing the format line to format:on? When you do that and boot the
> installation floppy, it will give you a prompt on the LCD asking if you
> want to format the internal disk drive. Tell it yes and it will install
> the boot loader. Then it will load the operating system, and if all is OK,
> it should be an HDR again.

Do I have to do this for external drives too?


Thanks for the help!
F.

On Jun 19, 11:36 am, "Federico" <[email protected]> wrote:

> When I turn the HDR on it finds the internal drive and then it stops,
> seaching the external one without recognizing it. (that's when it says
> "press F4 to skip).

That suggests that the disk drive settings in the CMOS setup aren't
correct. But first, check the jumpers on your new external drive and
be sure that it's set as Master. Sometimes Cable Select will work
(this is the default setting for most new drives these days) but not
always.

The boot loader (the TOOLS.INI modification) is only for the internal
drive, but the external drive must be partitioned for the BIOS to see
it, and it must be formatted for the HDR to see it.