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RM45 Removable Media Storage System
Introduction The professional sampler is well suited to removable storage media, as it enables an unlimited sample library and the media is only used infrequently for loading and saving. E-mu Systems were quick to adopt SCSI as a disk interface standard, initially to hook up the new Mac based hard drives, but then for the emerging removable hard drives. SyQuest were an early and successful pioneer of this technology, starting with a range of smaller capacity non SCSI drives in 1982. By 1987 they had moved onto the industry standard 44 MB SCSI removable drive, which E-mu Systems repackaged as the RM45 - Removable Media Storage System. Emulator III The 2U high black RM45 was initially launched as a companion to the Emulator III, complete with matching purple stripe. It cost a rather over the top $1995, when it was launched in the summer of 1989. The Emax II was launched with external SCSI, and it too was partnered with the RM45 in the same year.  Using the Beast In todays minature world, where 45 MB
can fit on a Compact Flash Card, the SyQuest drive is decidely big and clunky. The 5.25" removable disks are large and fragile, they must be treated with care, and the mechnical system in the SyQuest means that the disk must spin
down to a complete halt before the drive is ejected. It is all too easy to press eject whilst the the disk is spinning. With care the disks will last a few years, but we recommend a total backup
strategy to a different media such as ZIP, MO or preferably CD-R.Technical The RM45 contains a SyQuest SQ555 internal SCSI removable hard drive, a small but loud fan (just like the culprits in the Emulator III) on the rear panel, and an imported switched power supply. There is lots of spare room inside the case, which must be opened to access the SCSI termination and ID settings. Specifications The SQ555 is a 5.25" SCSI removable hard disk drive with a 20 ms average seek time. It employs Automatic Error Correction with retries and self-test diagnostics. The unformatted disk capacity is 44.39 MB.  The drive uses SQ400 cartridges which have 2 data
surfaces and are accesed by 2 data heads. There is an embedded servo, and the cartrdiges have 1275 tracks per surface and a 512 bytes block size. Track to track seek time is 7 ms, average seek time is 20 ms,
and the maximum seek time is 42 ms.The disks rotate at 3220 RPM, and have a data transfer rate of up to 10 Mb/s, and a 17 second spin up start time, and 10 second spin down stop time. |
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Syquest SQ555 Care |
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SyQuest are long gone as a drive manufacturer (they went to the wall in 1998, after Iomega took them apart with the ZIP and JAZ drives). However drives and
media can still be bought from their web site, and s/h drives and disks are easily located on eBay. |
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There are 6 jumpers mounted on the rear of the drive. |
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The internal SQ555 drive uses three 8 pin SIP resistor packs for termination. These all must be removed when the drive is in the middle of the internal SCSI
string. These SIP resistor packs are keyed, so look closely at the resistor packs for pin 1 and mark it down in case you ever have to reinstall these packs. The resistor packs are located next to the SCSI ID jumpers. |
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SyQuest Cartridges E-mu continued to support the Syquest cartridge system until 1996, with both 45 and 88 MB cartridges available as blank, with standard samples sets of customised with the samples you want.
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88MB Syquest Cartridges |
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RM45 Product Spec
* Model # 6089
* Part # 6073 Blank |
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