Yet another PC Card thread

[LesliesTube]

This time: PCMCIA To USB!
Do these things work on the Fantom X?
I keep asking question because it seems to be the perfect workstation to me. Yet, the storage and the loading times are frightening me a bit, therefore I shall seek the best solution for these issues.
Anyone?

[HK77]

- You can access the PCMCIA/compactflash card via USB when the Fantom X USB port is in storage mode. (it can also be used as a midi port).
- When you load samples and songs with audio tracks the loading times will be long. Also truncating samples and sample effects can take some time even if you have the full 512MB of ram, remember that the Fantom X is from 2003.
- If you have a song/setup with large samples set to load at startup, the Fantom will not boot until it has loaded the samples to RAM from the pc/flash card. In general that's a bad idea. :)
- Although the Fantom X will use a maximum of 1Gb PCMCIA/flash at a time, it is possible to use larger flash cards for example to use different setups, but to do this you need to plug the flash card to your PC and edit the directory names directly. I haven't tried this personally, but there are instructions available.

I wasn't completely certain about your specific question so I hope I was able to help. I also hope that if my information is outdated someone will correct me. :)

[LesliesTube]

Sorry! I wrote the post half awake. By "PCMCIA to USB" I meant PCMCIA to USB adaptor, a way I can theoretically (Unless proven impossible) connect a USB thumb drive through the PC card port.
Your answer is informative and good too! I know the Fantom has diabolical loading times. My Kurzweil K2661 takes 5 minutes to load 128 megs, is the FantomX slower than that or faster?

[gcoudert67]

My Kurzweil K2661 takes 5 minutes to load 128 megs, is the FantomX slower than that or faster?

My Mellotron card contains about 230Mb of samples and takes about 15 minutes to load!

[LesliesTube]

My Kurzweil K2661 takes 5 minutes to load 128 megs, is the FantomX slower than that or faster?

My Mellotron card contains about 230Mb of samples and takes about 15 minutes to load!

In another thread someone said the "Fantomas" (320 Megs~) set loads in 7 mins for him... The loading times are ranging from fairly slow to satanic indeed. It seems It'll be best to get a Fantom X after I'll finally get a Flash-Rom Synth a la Kurzweil PC3K or a Motif XF...

[gcoudert67]

The Fantomas card also takes 7 minutes on mine. Maybe I underestimated the size of my Mellotron samples.

[LesliesTube]

Phew... 7 Minutes for 300+ Megs is better than my Kurzweil K2661. So I might bear a setup with these two keyboards :) Back on topic, can someone tell if a USB to PCMCIA adaptor works on the FantX?

[HK77]

Do you mean a physical PCMCIA-USB adapter? I've never heard of such a thing but I'd be interested to know more about it! On the other hand you can access the PCMCIA/Flash card on your Fantom directly via USB when your Fantom is set in storage mode...maybe I'm missing something?

I've used compactflash (CF) cards with a PCMCIA adapter (something like this: http://computerusb.com/images/PCMCIA_Co ... dapter.jpg) with my Fantom X6 for years, and also used generic CF to USB adapters to move larger samples or backup data from my Fantom card to my PC. If you have a quick CF card this can save you some time with large files. If I remember correctly the Fantom X USB conforms to USB 1.1 data rate.

[LesliesTube]

Something like this
http://www.pcmciatousb.com/

[LesliesTube]

I have to double post and add that one asked in a thread about fast SD\CF cards. People told him that with SD cards the data transfer rate ranged from 500 KB to 600KB\s, which is fair and a bit faster than my K2661. More testimonials?