ESI-32 : Upgrades

Floppy Drive  The disk drive is a Sony 3.5" DS/HD MPF420-1. You can replace it with a variety of 3.5" IDE drives, provided you set the id to 0 (most drives ship with the id set to 1) . A good replacement is the TEAC FD235HF-A529 (the more common FD235HF-A291 does not have jumpers).

Syquest Drive

SCSI Drives The most popular upgrade after some new memory is a SCSI device. The ESI-32 will interface to a wide range of external devices including hard disks, magnetic optical drives,, removables drives and CDROM's. Check the 1995 ESI-32 compatibility list for details, as well as the more recent ESI2000 list. These lists are rather out of date, and even new 4 GB SCSI drives will be unavailable soon. You are probable safe with Seagate or IBM hard drives, Iomega removables and Toshiba and Plextor CDROM's. However test before buying whenever possible. Always use the latest OS 3.02.

E-mu Systems promoted the then popular Syquest 270 MB 3.5" removable hard drive, as the preferred device (and even sold ESI-32's with it installed internally in place of the floppy drive). Once Iomega stormed the market with Zips and Jaz drives, E-mu Systems responded and updated the OS to 3.02, so that it would work properly with these new removable drives. If you have an old version of the OS, be aware that it will not support devices bigger than 1GB, nor work with Iomega products.

Drive Formatting Internal and external hard drives and removable media need to be formatted using the following procedure:

• Go to Master/Global, #7 (Disk Utilities)
• Select sub module #6 (Format Disk)
• Choose the Zip drive, press 'Enter'
• Press '8' on the keypad
• Then press 'Yes'.

This will install the File System on the hard drive, without doing a complete disk format. This is the only method that will work with the Iomega Zip drive. A normal format will run for ever.

Warning Attempting to do a normal disk format may cause the Zip cartridge to be unrecognized by the ESI. Upon doing this you will have to run Norton utilities via a MAC or PC to recover the cartridge).

ESI-32 Drive Compatibility 1995     (53KB / 1 page)   ESI2000 Drive Compatibility 1999    (17KB / 1 page)   ESI-32 SCSI Information         (269KB / 5 pages)

 

It is possible to upgrade the ESI-32 with an internal 3.5" SCSI hard drive or removable drive, in place of the standard floppy drive. You will obviously lose the use of the floppy drive.
 

If you are using an ESI sampler over SCSI from Windows you'll be familar with the fact that everytime the PC powers on it "plug and plays" the ESI and you have to cancel the "unknown device" message 8 times. Well here is the solution ! A simple DLL for download and installation, instructions are included.
  

The ESI-32 has two 30-pin SIMM sockets which take DRAM in matched pairs.

* Parity or non-parity.
* 70ns or faster
* 2 x 1MB or
* 2 x 4MB or
* 2 x 16MB

Do not try 8MB SIMM's, like most E-mu Systems samplers, the ESI-32 will not recognise them. Use low profile SIMM's if you want to upgrade to TURBO status in the future, otherwise the SIMM's will block the upgrade card.

The ESI-32 can be upgraded with a Digital Interface Board (p/n 6210) which provides SPDIF I/O, at 32, 44.1 and 48kHz. It costs $200.00 and is still available.

OS 3.02 is available as an upgrade for $99 (p/n 6213).
  

The ESI-32 can be upgraded with a SCSI Board (p/n 6211) which provides an external 50-pin SCSI connector for $250.00.
 

 This kit was announced 11th July 1997 and adds new features and functionality to your ESI-32 sampler, for $495 (p/n 6215). Easily installed, this upgrade kit contains new software and hardware enhancements, including six additional outputs, 18 new filters (from the recent Orbit module), new DSP functions and twin 24-bit stereo effects processors. The upgrade includes OS 3.02 Software, but requires low profile SIMM's.