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Emulator III : Upgrades & Add Ons
Factory Upgrades The
Emu factory have long since stopped providing upgrades for the Emulator III. However they do still provide some vital spares. The EIII has an internal card frame, which was designed to enable upgrade cards to be fitted. Whilst 32 voices
and 16 MB of sample RAM were publicy announced in adverts in May 1988, these upgrades never materialised. The EIII had some big teething problems - which took priority over these upgrades being developed into production. However the SCSI
bus was exploited, and a wide range of external sdrives were available over time.
Hard Drive The Emulator III came with an internal SCSI Hard Drive, which is typically around 40 MB, and some EIII's have already been upgraded with 300 - 500 MB drives during their working life. The
internal hard disk can be easily replaced with an upgraded disk.
External Hard Disks The EIII supports a range of external hard and removable disks. By far the best option is to use a Magnetic Optical Removable Disk
Drive (such as the Fujitsu 640 MB models). Use 512 byte sectored optical disks (128/230/540 MB), as 2048 byte sectored disks may not work (e.g. 640 MB and 1.3 GB 3.5" MO).
MO drives can easily handle the rather slow EIII SCSI bus
and they offer very high data security. Jaz and Zip drives can also be used, but users report reduced reliability of removable drives based on magnetic media.The EIII takes time to format large drives, so 1 GB is a practical upper limit (3
hours plus with the mandatory disk verify).
HD300 External Hard Disk In the summer of 1988 E-mu Systems launched the HD300 external hard disk for the EIII. This rugged 300 Megabyte hard disk was designed to complement the EIII Rack or Keyboard (it
does nicely match the sleek black EIII Rack with its magenta racing stripe). It transfers data over the super high speed SCSI interface. The HD300 comes loaded with ten banks of factory EII sounds (a $950 value). Each 4MB bank will load in
under nine seconds.
Features include; LSI circuitry for high reliability, automatic shipping lock, integral shock mounts, 1:1 sector interleave, automatic temperature compensation, and 48-bit error correction. Retail price was a
huge $5,500 !!
 RM45 Removable Drive E-mu Systems
supplied a SCSI 45MB removable rack mount drive - the RM45 in mid 1989. The drives cost $1995 each.
more »
CDROM The EIII supports a range of SCSI CDROM drives although
it is advisable to upgrade the OS to 2.42 before trying out a new CDROM drive. The later OS has improved SCSI support.
 OMI produced a 19" rack mount CDROM player for the Emulator III, and other SCSI/RS422 samplers. It was launched at Summer NAMM 1988.
It was called the Professional Universal Compact Disk Player (ProCDP), and it had a digital output and a hand held remote. The SCSI version was $1795, RS422 $1995 and both interfaces could be had for $2495.
Computer Editing Digidesign developed software for the Mac,
called Sound Designer II, that allows visual editing of the EIII samples - and SCSI transfer of samples from the Mac to the EIII and back. Unfortunately it is no longer in production, and the later
versions removed sampler support (after version 2.5)
An alternative excellent sample editor is Alchemy, (for the Mac - a demo version is here). Alchemy supports many of the E-mu Systems range, including the Emax, Emax II (MIDI and RS-422),
SP-1200 and EIII (SCSI), but it is no longer in production.
more »
Jasmine Mega Drive E-mu Systems recommended this 5.25"
10 MB floppy drive for backing up EIII sound bank data in the summer of 1988. It was manufactured by Jasmine Technologies in the USA. A 4 MB bank loaded in 35 seconds, and the drive sold for
$999. The floppy diskettes cost $36. This drive never made it as a popular format, but did anyone use this ? |
Site Options
Hard Disks
* EIII Memory Upgrade 
* EIII Boot ROM 2.0
* EIII Diagnostics