Kawai Q80 Questions

HxC Floppy emulator support for all others Keyboards/Samplers...
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pmj
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Nov 07, 2016 4:05 pm

Kawai Q80 Questions

Post by pmj »

I have a Kawai Q80 sequencer and am interested in fitting an HxC SD drive to replace the floppy. I've looked through the threads here and just wanted to double check one or two points:

1. Is the correct model for the Kawai Q80 the "SD HxC Floppy Emulator REV F 3"1/2 Form factor/cased (HE10 34 pins interface)" ?

2. Is there a way of converting existing Kawai floppy disks over to HxC format using a Mac or PC via a USB floppy disk drive?

Many thanks in advance.

pmj
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Nov 07, 2016 4:05 pm

Re: Kawai Q80 Questions

Post by pmj »

Been playing around with backing up Kawai Q80 format 720k floppy discs to a Mac, just posting here in case it's of use to anyone...

This is on a macOS Sierra 10.12.1.

I'm using a cheapo Neoteck 3.5" USB floppy drive from Amazon which shows up as "SONY FDU-USB Media" in the Mac drive list once you insert a floppy.

Insert Kawai Q80 floppy
Select "Ignore" from the screen options (Initialize / Ignore / Eject)
Go to Disk Utility
Right click on the "SONY FDU-USB Media" icon in the sidebar and select "Image from Untitled"
Format = read/write
Encryption = none
Name the file and choose a location
Save

Should write a .dmg file containing the contents of the Kawai disk to your specified location. This also appears to preserve the Kawai formatting.

You can't mount or edit the .dmg but at least you have your Q80 files backed up. You can change the .dmg in Finder to a .img if that is preferable.

You can also do all this from Terminal as an option.

* Important: Check that your USB floppy is mounted as "disk2" before you run these, you'll start copying the wrong disk otherwise - Disk Utility > SONY FDU-USB Media > Device (bottom right-hand corner) *

dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/Users/[username]/Desktop/KawaiDisk.img

User name goes into that line without the [ ]. You should end up with KawaiDisk.img on your Desktop.

You may need to add sudo at the start of this if you get a "Permission Denied" error, in which case:

sudo dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/Users/[username]/Desktop/KawaiDisk.img

You'll be prompted for your user password.

You can also write the image back to a blank formatted Kawai floppy by using:

sudo dd if=/Users/[username]/Desktop/KawaiDisk.img of=/dev/disk2

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