“My computer is an iMac with FireWire, and I have a FireWire to SCSI converter. I was wondering whether the following configuration would work for file transfer between my iMac and K2000. I would like to be able to load sounds directly from the iMac’s hard drive and CD drive to the Kurzweil, then save them on its internal hard drive. Do people do this sort of thing? Is there a much simpler way?”
First, a Kurzweil simply *cannot* see a Mac Drive and a Mac *cannot* see a Kurzweil-formatted Drive. So neither controller/CPU can transfer files between them.
Second, even if you format your Kurzweil’s Hard Drive as DOS (which Kurzweils and Macs with the latest OS can read), you’ll still be tempting fate as your Mac or your Kurzweil can make changes to your drive’s FAT (File Allocation Table) without alerting the other device. This sets up a situation where your Mac or Kurzweil might put something to a location that it believes is empty, which can cause catastrophic results. Some experienced users do this, and are able to keep it working, but it’s not for the faint at heart. And it does require specific types of hardware. In the old days it was possible to get a Mac and a Kurzweil (or other sampler) to share a common SCSI bus, but now with IDE drives and the USB/FireWire on newer Macs it’s virtually impossible to effectively share resources with SCSI-based samplers.
You can get a USB or FireWire to SCSI Adapter, and then a SCSI Removable Drive (like a SCSI Zip or Jaz) and swap it back and forth. You can even get a USB Floppy and insert a PC-Formatted floppy into the Mac and then insert it into the Kurzweil. (This is less convenient if most of your files are greater than the size of a single floppy.)