32 Megabyte memory for S1000 / S1100 
and S2800 / S3000 / S3200 / CD3000

Intro

There are two kinds of board:
 

	M32S1 1 in stock and ready to ship.	S1000 / S1100	Also the S1000KB, S1000PB and S1100EX.
	M32S3 Available late March.	S2800 / S3000 / S3200 / CD3000	The S2800 and CD3000 are normally only expandable to 16 Megabytes.

The M32S1 behaves identically to four Akai 8 Megabyte boards.

The M32S3 behaves identically to four Akai EXM 3008 8 Megabyte boards.  It is not suitable for the MPC3000, which uses a single Akai 2 or 8 Megabyte board and two 30 pin SIMMs. (But see http://www.forat.com , here or here for MPC memory.) The M32S3 and EXM 3008 boards are not for the S3000XL, S3200XL or CD3000XL – which use standard SIMMs.

One M32S1 or M32S3 board provides the maximum possible memory for these samplers:

• 32 Megabytes
• 16 Megawords
• 3 minutes 10 seconds stereo @ 44.1kHz
• 6 minutes 20 seconds mono @ 44.1kHz
• The boards behave identically to four Akai 8 Megabyte boards, so there can be no incompatibilities with different versions of firmware/software.

These boards replace all other memory boards.  There is no possibility of installing other boards or two of these boards.

Installation of the M32S1 board in the S1000/S1100 is straightforward.  It plugs into any of the four slots and there is no need to alter switch (S1100) or jumper (S1000) settings on the main board.

Installation of the M32S3 board in the S3000 and S3200 is also straightforward.  It plugs into all four slots at once.

Installation of the M32S3 board into the S2800 and the CD3000 without the analogue input board involves soldering several wires.  The CD3000 with analogue input board involves quite a lot of extra work to remove part of a bracket which is in the way of the new memory board.  In the S2800 the alphanumeric functions of two groups of buttons on the front panel (Select Prog to Help and F1 to F8) are reversed, so a little more care is required when using them to name samples etc.  (Thanks to Sylvia Miller on the Akai Samplers List, 24 June 2005, for pointing this out.)

In all cases the installation should be performed by an experienced technician because it is too easy for non-technical people to damage either the board or the sampler itself with static electricity.  A simple error such as leaving a blob of solder somewhere can cause all sorts of trouble.  Installation and test takes 30 minutes or less, except for the CD3000 with analogue input board, which takes about an hour.

Pricing, availability and payment

Each board is supplied with full installation instructions, in a static-protective bag inside a small, robust cardboard carton.  Shipping weight is 200g.

Australian customers

AUD$528 (inc.GST) for one board or AUD$$1012 for two.  $15 for Australia Post Express Post with signature on delivery.  Installation is free if the sampler is brought to Real World Interfaces (Daylesford, Victoria). 
 

Customers outside Australia

Payment via PayPal is the quickest and best approach. 

• Via PayPal.  If you have a PayPal account, then from your account page at PayPal, use the "Send money" tab with rw@firstpr.com.au, selecting Australian Dollars.  Alternatively please email us, and we will send you a PayPal invoice, which makes it easy to complete the transaction.  If you don't have a PayPal account, you can still use PayPal with most credit cards, with or without establishing an account.
  
  
• "Wire transfer" into our account in Melbourne or https://TransferWise.com, which is lower cost and highly convenient.
  

The Australia Post EMS Courier service ("Express") is delivered by your country's Post Office or by a courier company such as DHL.  Delivery will take between three and seven days.  Your government may charge import duty and/or sales tax on items imported into your country.  EMS packages can be tracked at the Auspost site.

Number of  boards, with EMS courier	PayPal	Wire / TransferWise
1	AUD$539	AUD$523
2	AUD$992	AUD$963

Prices in USD$, Euros etc.

Mid-market exchange rates for all currency conversions can be found at:  http://www.xe.com/?c=AUD .  Charts of the last month's AUD exchange are USD and EUR.  Banks and PayPal charge several percent higher than the mid-market rate.  Transferwise provides the exact local currency cost before the transaction is finalised.

 

Warranty

The warranty period is 1 year, or 5 years if the board is operated at temperatures no higher than 70°C (158 Fahrenheit).

Some samplers are installed in crowded racks with little or no ventilation - causing extremely high temperatures to develop inside the equipment.  This greatly accelerates electrical and chemical processes which cause the breakdown of semiconductors and other components.

There's nothing particularly temperature-sensitive about these boards, but commercial electronic devices are specified to operate between 0 and 70°C.  Temperatures over 70°C are excessive, unnecessary and will significantly diminish the lifetime of all electronic components.  Whether or not you use these memory boards, please ensure adequate ventilation for all your equipment in crowded racks.

External fans are one way to keep equipment cool.  However, the noise is typically unacceptable in a studio.  Packing the racks solid with equipment will cause them to overheat, so I suggest having gaps every two items, so heat can escape from the top or the bottom of each unit.

Contact details

Telephone and postal details are at the bottom of the main First Principles page, at    http://www.firstpr.com.au/#contact.  Please note that Melbourne time is very different from European or North American time, so please think carefully before calling.  The above-mentioned page links to timezone charts.

It is generally best to enquire via email: rw@firstpr.com.au mailto:rw@firstpr.com.au .
 

I do not manufacture or sell 8 Megabyte cards – although I used to make 8 Meg cards for the S1000 / S1100.  If you only require one or two 8 Meg cards, let me know.  I may be able to put you in touch with people who have just purchased a 32 Meg card and have one or more 8 Meg cards for sale.

I have no plans at present to make other kinds of memory card, SCSI interface cards etc.

The electroluminescent backlights of these samplers fade over time.  The S2800/S3000/S3200/CD2800 series have a push-switch on the contrast control to turn off the backlight when not needed.  The backlights are replaceable - the following site supplies them: http://www.midi-rakete.de/eng/elfolie.htm .  (A UK site  http://www.backlights.co.uk now redirects to the midi-rakete.de site.)

Real World Interfaces is not associated with Akai.  Akai's web site:  http://www.akaipro.com/ has information about current products and some support material for the S series samplers.  See the section below for software where the software is on this site.

The web site of the Akai Samplers Mailing List  is now http://midicase.com/akai/. (It used to be: http://sonicware.com/akai/ and before that http://www.antisleep.com/akai/ ). The midicase.com site contains a FAQ and links to other sites.

There is also a discussion specifically for the S1000 and S1100 samplers:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/akaiS1000S1100Samplers .

Jules Vleugels' site on the S series samplers used to be at www.cs.uu.nl/~jules/Akai/ and is now hosted under a curiously named, but perfectly OK, domain at http://akai.brothelowner.com/jules/ .  It contains a lot of useful information.

IceCool http://akaiscsifaq.digidude.net/icemain.shtml has an extensive series of Akai sampler pages which deal especially with MESA, SCSI behaviour, SCSI adaptors for computers, CD-ROM, hard disk and removable storage, LCD backlights, and creating Akai compatible CDs.     

There are some customer reviews of these samplers, links and other resources at the following sites:

• http://www.sonicstate.com/synth/ 
• http://synthmuseum.com/akai/akas100001.html
  

If you are wondering how to install 8 and 2 Meg memory boards in an S1000 or S1100, here is all the information your technician needs:  8Meg.html.
 

The AkaiPro site http://www.akaipro.com carries .PDF (Adobe Acrobat) versions of manuals for many of the 20th century Akai samplers.  These are in the "Support > Legacy" section, from which the particular instrument can be selected.  From the resulting page, select "Docs & Downloads".  These are scans from the original page images, with some of the text replaced by OCR (Optical Character Recognition) characters, which were sometimes less than 100% accurate. 

Here is a guide to PDF operation manuals:

Description	File date Publication date	PDF
Akai S1000 Series Software Version 2.0 Manual for S1000, S1000HD & S1000PB	2000-10-16 1989-11	S1000-V2.0-Manual.pdf and from AkaiPro.
Akai S1100 Software Version 1.0 Manual	2000-10-16 1990-08	See below *.
S2800, S3000, S3200 and CD3000 Manuals		The AkaiPro site in their S3000 section  has an S3000XL manual which is "for the S3000XL, also suitable for S2800 / 3000 / 3200 / CD3000i, although some product differences will not be documented".

In 2012 and 2013 there was discussion on the akaiS1000S1100Samplers Yahoo Group about scanning a service manual for the S1000 or S1100 series.  * If you join this group and look in the Files > Manuals section, you will find an S1100 Operation Manual and an S1100 Service Manual with schematics.  (I took a snapshot of them 2013-04-23 for Justin  . . . Justin Case they ever disappear.)

If you have any of the software I am missing, please let me know.

Real World Interfaces memory boards function identically to four 8 Megabyte Akai boards.  So they do not depend on a particular version of operating system.  To support Akai owners, here is some information on versions of the operating systems.

Software – the internal operating system (OS), also known as "firmware" – comes in two forms as far as the sampler is concerned.  Firstly, it can be in two EPROM chips plugged into the motherboard.  (EPROMs are chips which can be programmed with ones and zeroes, and then erased with ultraviolet light, to be programmed again.)  Secondly the operating system can be on either floppy or hard-disk.  With these, the sampler must have some version of the software in EPROM, and once it boots up and finds an operating system on a floppy or hard disk, it loads that in place of the version in the EPROM.   The advantage of having it in EPROM is that there is no delay when turning the machine on.  The advantage of it being on disc is that if your sampler has old versions in EPROM, you can use the latest version of software on disk without the need to reprogram or replace those EPROMs.  If your sampler has a hard disk, you can boot the machine with the new OS on floppy, and write it to the hard disk.

The final versions of the software/firmware are:

S1000 and S1000KB	4.40	1994 July 24
S1100	4.30	1994 January 17
S2800/S3000/S3200	2.0	1995 March 29
CD3000	2.0	1997 October 29

Green means software on a floppy disk, which can presumably be written to a hard disk if the machine has one. (Some people use the internal or external SCSI interface to connect to a FLASH-based solid state device which behaves like a hard drive.)  These are supplied as .exe files for Windows and will write to a floppy disk, which can then be used to boot the sampler.  Not many people have floppy disks on their PCs these days.  Furthermore, you will need Windows 98 or perhaps Windows 2000 to enable the program to directly write to the floppy disk drive.  I tried one of these programs under Windows XP and there was an error: "An application has attempted to directly access the hard disk, which cannot be supported."

Black means firmware to be written to EPROMs.  Some or many of these are available at the AkaiPro site, under Support > Legacy. The akaiS1000S1100Samplers Yahoo Group Files section also has some firmware/software and floppy disk utility programs.

The final version of software for the S1000 is 4.4.  Here is a .zip file of the EPROM images for two 27C512s:  akai-software/s1000-v44-eproms.zip  .  Version 4.3 is akai-software/s1000-v43-eproms.zip . 

Here is a file with a PC .exe program which will apparently write a Version 4.4 floppy disk for the S1000:  akai-software/S1000v440-FD-for-PC.zip .  If you try this out please let me know how it works.  Perhaps it will also work for the S1000KB and S1000PB.

The final version of software for the S1100 is 4.3:  akai-software/S11V430.zip . 

This PC .exe program will apparently write version 4.3 for the S1100 to a floppy disk: akai-software/S11k-430-FD-for-PC.zip (file date 1999-11-17).

In this file: akai-software/s1100-202-s1100ex-136.zip you will find the 1.36 version EPROM files for the EX1100 (the slave version of the S1100).  Together with 2.02 for the S1100, which is also in this file, the S1100/EX1100 pair, joined by SCSI cables with a hard disk, was capable of hard-disk recording.  I don't know whether this works with later version S1100 software.  Please see discussion on the S1000/S1100 discussion list (starting March 2006) for information about these EPROM images.

For the S3000, and I guess the S3200 and perhaps S2800, this PC program will supposedly write a floppy disk with version 2.0 software: akai-software/S2kv2-FD-for-PC.zip  (file date 1999-11-17).

For the  CD3000 V2.0 OS:  akai-software/cd3kv20.zip and the program to write the file it contains (Cd3kv20.td0) it to a floppy disc on a PC akai-software/teledisk.zip .  Here is a standalone PC .exe program which will apparently write to a floppy disk too: akai-software/Cd3-200-FD-for-PC.zip . 

Here are the EPROM images for the CD3000 V2.0, in two binary files for the two 27010 EPROMs: akai-software/CD3000-firmware-V2-for-27010-EPROMs.zip (I have not tested this, please let me know if they work or not) and in two 64k  chunks per chip, which is how I read them in 1997: akai-software/Akai-CD3000-V-200-EPROMs.zip.

A version 2.0 EPROM image for the S3000XL are here: S30XLV20.zip This is the top 256 kbytes of a 512kbyte 27040 EPROM - I have been told it works fine if you load it in at offset 0x40000, leaving the bottom half of the chip empty.  Version 1.06 and 1.50 (courtesy of Steve Charman) are believed to be good: S3000XL-1.06-1.50-eproms.zip These are for a 32 pin AMD AM27C040.  Steve wrote "V1.5 was the last real update as V2.0 addressed the SCSI transfer stuff for MESA - and thats all as far as I am aware."

At the AkaiPro site http://www.akaipro.com/s3000 there used to be some other files which I did not make available until 2018-05-06.  I saved them some years ago, and now they are no longer at that site, here they are.   I had written of some of these files "there are also PC and Mac (no-doubt for now obsolete hardware and software) versions of MESA, which I understand could control S3000 and S3000XL series via SCSI, including sample editing."

akai-software/akaipro-2006-archive-os.zip  I created this zip file in 2013, but all the constituent files are from 2005-03-29 which is when I would have downloaded them.  I haven't tried to figure out what they all do.  Please let me know if you find out for sure what they are, and to what extent they work.

    1_re32v101.zip      379,154
   2_dr16pv320.zip      440,848
   2_mpc2kv172.zip      166,069
      aksysf17.zip    6,988,360
      aksysl17.zip    3,866,551
       Cd3-200.zip      119,977
       CD3XV20.zip      137,507
       dp6v302.zip      566,043
    DPS12V2.11.zip      366,482
       mesa2v2.zip    4,689,800
      midiload.zip       13,739
       Mpcv311.zip      179,464
      osldr_4k.zip       33,199
       Osm2201.zip    1,880,002
     S1000v440.zip       73,938
      S11k-430.zip       95,331
         S2kv2.zip      128,445
         S3k-2.zip      132,497
        S3xlv2.zip      155,513
       s56v214.zip      407,986
       Z48_145.zip      910,609

      aksys17f.sit    5,440,952
      aksys17l.sit    1,867,341
  MacXOSLoader.sit      176,200
MESAII.INS.sea.sit      777,031
       osldmac.sit      101,532
       OSM2210.sit       47,675.

Akai memory board part numbers as search-engine bait:   EXM005 EXM 005 EXM-005 (2M for S1k) EXM008 EXM 008  EXM-008 (8M for S1k)  EXM3002 EXM 3002 EXM-3002 (2M for S3k) EXM3008 EXM 3008 EXM-3008 (8M for S3k).