floppy disc insanity

whymark

whymark

New member
good day all, I have a Disklavier Mark II XG (acoustic piano with a digital component) which records to and plays back from floppy discs I tried reading some floppies that I knew had data on them as got the message that the discs needed to be formatted....HOSRE HOCKEY!!.....I found out through this forum that Yamaha makes its own floppy disc reader so I dropped a few coins and got one....Same deal...THese floppies play back just fine with the piano but, 20 seconds later and 10 ft. away they suddenly need to be formatted???!!!....I'm desparate

Thanks
Mark
 
Can you provide a bit more information? Are you trying to transfer them to a computer another system? Depending on what you are trying to do, if you are going from the piano to a computer, then there is a format issue. Yamaha could be using a proprietary formatting or a Linux formatting.

Can't say we can help, but do tell us a bit more just in case we can.
 
Proprietary disks could not be read by PC drives. Check this article to use the MIDI connection to get your music to the PC. This is OLD stuff, but should be transferable to modern midi connection through your AI or MIDI interface on your computer. Then just record the midi in on your DAW while playing from the disks on your Disklavier. The midi files can then be exported from your DAW.
 
I'm physically removing the discs from the piano and putting them into the Yamana disc drive which is attached to my computer. I want to Xfer the material on the discs to my computer HD. The DKC 500 control box on the piano (made by Yamaha along with the Piano itself) can read the discs fine and playback the music that's on them. When I put them into the Yamaha disc drive connected t my computer and try to open them, I get a popup that says they need to be formatted??!!! Ain't science a womdermemt??
 
Hi,
I think you need to read the manual to see what sort of file-system the keyboard uses.

What computer and operating system are you using?
 
Are you talking about the 90mm floppy diosks like you put in an A: drive of a PC?

I remember similar issues when transferring midi files from Amiga to a PC many years ago, and it was a problem caused by the fact that some disks were DD and others were HD. On the right hand side of the disk there is a little rectangular hole (it's on the other side of the disk to the little write-protector slide. I can't remember exactly what I did in those days, but I think I had to put tape over that hole to fool the PC (or the Amiga) into thing it was a DD disk, not HD. Then it would work ok.

That may or may not be the problem/ Someone with better memory might be able to help
 
I use 3 1/2" floppies every night I gig just about.
Long story why but suffice it to say that I use them for running bass/drums sequences thru my Roland XP 60 as backing for my solo gig.
At 3-7 gigs a week they last a year or two before starting to have problems ..... drop outs ..... missed information and other glitches.
They can also go bad just sitting on a shelf .... just age and humidity etc.

Anyway, one of the ways they go bad is to show up needing to be formatted which the keyboard will do.
but they can not BE formatted I've tried both the keyboard and the 'puter and they won't format. Even after going thru the process they show that error of needing formatting.
...... so I think that's one of the ways that they can go bad.

They might not be any good anymore and can't be formatted because the disc is done.
 
I had a guy who used a Roland recorder (I can't remember the ,model) with a hard drive (SCSI). There was a way to remove the HD and replace it with an SD card (I did do the mod). Then, one removed the SD card from the recorder, put it into another with an SD card slot, use an application that would read the disk format straight into Reaper. So, it is not always impossible.
 
I think the discs have gone bad ...... checked and it does need a Yamaha format

And I'm familiar with the disclavier ...... it's essentially a player piano using solenoids to drive the keys and a floppy to give the key strike and velocity info to those solenoids.
You could buy a library of pre-recorded discs ...... and some of them could even record what a piano player would play on them and you could play that back.

When I was youngish I helped an older piano tech install one ( what a PIA ) in a customers' piano ...... a uncommon job but sometimes a customer can have a piano they really like so it was something that could be installed in the shop.



EDIT ...... a quick search found reference to it using regular floppies ..... said it used DD but could use 1.44 HD as well ...... but that it had to be formatted into the Yamaha format so I'm wrong about it being IBM.

However, I still say the discs are bad because
1. the fact that it needs formatting means it lost data or it wouldn't need reformatting and

2. if you reformat it you'll lose the info on it anyway.




.
 
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There is the distinct possibility, if all else is correct, that the heads on one or the other of the drives needs aligning...
 
Steenamaroo said:
Hi,
I think you need to read the manual to see what sort of file-system the keyboard uses.

What computer and operating system are you using?
Click to expand...

Sorry..I'm not sure if I got the situation right.
Are these discs working on one device but not on another?

If so, give us some details about the all of the test systems.
 
I'm running Win7 on an Asus notebook.....I've never heard of a floppy going bad just because but, I've never seen an elephant fly either....still got some things to learn about.....if they are indeed bad, this is devastating....thanks for all of your imput... very much appreciated even if the news is bad
mark
 
I'm with the other guys though ..... they work fine on the piano ?
Do I have that right?
IF they work fine with the disklavier then it's got to be a compatibility problem with the puter.
That's actually good news if I have that right.

When I researched these things there was an entire section on their website about determining which discs and software were compatible with which models of disklavier .... so just 'cause you got a Yamaha floppy reader doesn't mean it was compatible with your model.
If it were me I'd call Yamaha ...... if it takes a while to get thru then so be, it but they'll definitively know what's up .... they're gonna know what software you need.

whymark said:
I'm running Win7 on an Asus notebook.....I've never heard of a floppy going bad just because
Click to expand...
they absolutely will ..... I can't be sure if that's what's happened to yours, of course.

But I literally earn my living using floppys and I have around 800 of the things with seq's I've done ..... 10s of thousands of songs ...... I treat them VERY carefully ..... kept in sealed containers and very carefully kept away from speakers or magnets or even the house wiring ..... ANYthing that could have any magnetic field at all and still from time to time I'll go back in the archives and get one that's maybe 10 years old and it will no longer work.
And every single one of them used to work or they wouldn't be on my shelves.
And often the error message I get is that the disc needs formatting. :(

This is all with Roland Keyboards though ..... no computer use although I did buy a USB floppy drive so I can store them on my puter just in case.

As I said, I can't be sure about yours and if yours are working with the disklavier I have to think you'll be able to get this figured out. ..... I sincerely hope you come back in the thread and tell us you managed to get them to work.
 
Yes, if you plug them into the computer and they don't work, then plug them back into the keys and they do, then the disk is not bad, the computer drive is not reading correctly. Whether that's incompatibility, or head alignment as I said before, is only guess on our part. Yamaha may be your only way through now, unless you hook up via midi and play them from the keyboard into a midi recording software (as I also previously recommended).
 
the discs haven't gone bad. If they had then the piano wouldn't be able to read them and play. I woke the hood up with Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue ~ 6 this morning!! Still when I remove the disc from the piano's control box and put them into the Yamaha disc drive I get the popup about reformatting. I'll check with Yamaha and see what they say. Thanks again for your ideas.
Mark
 
whymark said:
the discs haven't gone bad. If they had then the piano wouldn't be able to read them and play. I woke the hood up with Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue ~ 6 this morning!! Still when I remove the disc from the piano's control box and put them into the Yamaha disc drive I get the popup about reformatting. I'll check with Yamaha and see what they say. Thanks again for your ideas.
Mark
Click to expand...

Hey, doesn't your piano have MIDI out? Route it to your Yamaha from your piano. Your disks are not bad, I think the Yamaha has a different format than the piano. Even if they are the same manufacturer.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Hi,
I think you need to read the manual to see what sort of file-system the keyboard uses.

What computer and operating system are you using?
Click to expand...

I don't see an answer to this. Did I just miss it?

This seems relevant.
"PianoSoft floppy disks from Yamaha, and floppy disks formatted in the Disklavier cannot be seen by your computer because nothing is written on boot sector of the disk.
However, you can format disks on your computer that can be read by the Disklavier.
Starting with the MarkIIXG models, any IBM formatted 1.44 MB diskette will do.
However, for those models (MX100A/B, MX80, Wagon Grand, and MarkII) that can only read a 720k double density disk,
formatting can be an adventure with newer computer operating systems like Windows 2000, NT and XP.

I suggest that you obtain or keep an older laptop or desktop computer with a Windows 98 or older operating system that support DOS."

Does the Disklavier have internal storage?
Sounds like you need to format some floppies in your pc, I'm guess FAT or FAT32,
then copy whatever you want on to them from the Disklavier.

If it doesn't have internal storage I don't know what you can do.
It is possible to write MBR to a disc without altering its partitions and contents, but I'm thinking there's risk involved.
 
OK....let me reiterate....the discs are read just fine by the controller on the Disklavier and it will play wonderfully reading from the discs....when I remove the disc from the controller and plug it into my external Yamaha (a) disc drive THEN I get the popup that the disc needs to be formatted....ergo, the discs have not gone bad....so I wrote to Yamaha.....btw Yamaha will answer via phone call and email within 24 hrs.....anyway I explained what was happening and he thought for a while and replied "hhmmmmm, that's weird".....he did tell me how to get the MIDI files from the controller into Cubase so.....once I do that I'm starting over with brand new discs I can save them....The reason I'm makingsuch a fuss over this is because one of the discs is suppossed to be a digital copy taken from a reproducing piano roll of Gershwin playing Gershwin
 
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