Akai S700 Sample Dumping

Motu Fastlane

I have an old Akai S700 with a faulty disk drive. I've been meaning to get round to replacing the damaged belt with a new one, but also wanted to be able to archive the samples to my Mac. I knew from reading an old article in Keyboard magazine back in the 80's that the only application that works reliably is Sound Designer.

I managed to find a copy of Sound Designer (1.5 Universal) a while back to use with my old trusty Apple Mac Performa 630 (running Mac OS 7.5.5) and hooked it up using another old bit of vintage kit - my Mark Of The Unicorn 'Fastlane' 1 in 3 out midi interface.

Success! The Akai and Mac swapped file seamlessly..

On the left is the Akai loading the sample dump from Sound Designer; below is the file being sent.

I was hoping to integrate it with my Opcode Studio 5LX's but it doesn't completely work. While the Akai can receive the files from the Mac, there seems to be an issue sending files via the Studio 5's through the MOTU interface. I might be missing something though..

But, at the end of the day I can use my Akai s700 and save the samples onto my old P630 and Zip drive. It just requires changing a midi cable when using the S700 with the rest of my OMS setup. Not much of a hardship. I could get a Midi Merger though? That would fix that problem :-)

Poly 61 Innards

Must get a better way of attaching the battery to the board...