rfbutter wrote:No apologies needed, thanks for the info. I've been on the mpc forums alot lately trying to piece together what works and what doesn't. I guess you can mount a cf reader inside the 2000 but it requires flipping the scsi port inwards and splitting it. Not something I feel comfortable doing. I'll have to start the hunt for the pieces and work a little Dr. Frankenstien magic. Again thanks for the info and would you mind if I pm you if I have any other questions.
sure, no prob -
now, if you were to mount a *SCSI* card reader drive like the PCD-47B, etc. in where the floppy is, yes, it would be a tall order. i wouldn't want to go through all that mess.
but the floppy drive in the MPC2000 is almost certainly ATAPI - and there were ATAPI card reader drives made by Microtech (to fit in PC drive bays, of course).
as i said above, the limitation would have been that the 2000 has to format the drive/floppy/card as "MPC2000" format (i think it's a FAT12 or FAT16 disk format, similar to the old Windows 95) in order to be able to boot from it.
for me, it wasn't possible until i got a Mac with OS X. i had to use the standard PC format (FAT32, i think?) to transfer Zip discs back and forth with OS 9 or i would have excruciatingly slow disk read/writes and ultimately get a "-39 disk error" . but a FAT32 formatted disk will not boot an MPC2000.
but i found out that my MPC formatted Zip discs mounted fine in OS X, as long as it didn't have multiple partitions (i think they were just ignored). now, the original information floating around on the MPC forums is from Mike Goins at midicase.com and is several years old by now, and a lot of those people on the forums are a little bit mystified about SCSi, MPC/computer transfer and card readers, etc. anyway.
i'm going to give it a try if i find an ATAPI Microtech drive super cheap, but i am 99% sure it will work - the drive will slide right in just as it would on a 2000XL. as i said before, the reason the XL can use ATAPI card drives is that there is no need to boot from a disk/flopppy/card with the XL - it's OS resides on a ROM chip, which was a big advantage over the original 2000.
i already have two CF cards that work fine in between the MPC2000/PCD-40 and computer (and an ancient Cameramate USB card reader), so the MPC2000 native format mismatch ball ache of days past is definitely a non-issue now, at least for Mac. i don't know if that's the case with WinXP, i would imagine it's just as tolerant of the MPC2000 disk format*...
i think anyone with OSX (i'm using 10.3.9) and a ATAPI Zip could do the same thing. the big caveat is, have one or preferably two Zip discs MPC2000 formatted WITH THE OS ALREADY ON. easy to do if you already have a SCSI Zip drive, just format the Zips on the MPC and load the OS either from the floppy drive or download it and drag and drop in on the Zip. otherwise you'll have to reinstall the floppy, because *the 2000 MUST load it's OS off of a MPC2000 formatted disk!*