WARNING: This is not a guide, but merely an insight into what worked for me.  I know enough basic electronics not to do anything too stupid, but I give absolutely zero guarantee that what I've done is right or safe.  If you want to attempt this yourself, please know what you're doing - and if you think I've done something daft, or have any ideas for improvements, join the Ensoniq TS mailing list and let me know : ).

(Note: click on any of the pictures for larger shots)

Have you ever wanted to get rid of your Ensoniq TS SCSI hard drives or CD-ROMs?  They're unreliable moving parts systems that are just bound to go wrong when you least need them to, and a pain to have to mess around with.  Wouldn't it be nice if you could load all your sample banks from a Compact Flash memory card (or Notebook hard drive) instead, and have the whole thing mounted internally?

Yes it would : ).  At least that was my thinking.  This is a quick overview of how I achieved exactly that with my TS-12.

Background:  I have a limited set of samples that I was loading off a very old external SCSI hard disk.  I was getting sick of the noise of the enclosure's fan, and having to worry about the drive failing at any time.  So after finding out that SCSI memory card readers actually exist, I started wondering if you couldn't use one to load your samples from - perfect reliability, and silent to boot.

Part1: Finding a SCSI Compact Flash reader

I found this SCSI2 PC card reader on Ebay, very cheap.  I needed a Compact Flash -> PC Card adapter for use with my 64meg CF card - those are cheap and readily available.  An actual PC Card hard drive should also work (but moving parts again... ).

note: you can even get some readers that take Compact Flash and other memory cards directly.  I have no idea if they will work, but they probably will.  SCSI2 is supposedly backwards compatible with SCSI1, which the TS uses - however, SCSI is an arkward beast at the best of times, and the Ensoniq implementations were always a little unforgiving.

I used Ensoniq Disk Tools (this is ancient, badly written Windows software, but it does sort of work if you fight with it long enough) to format the card on a PC equipped with a SCSI2 interface card, and to copy my already archived samples to it - and after some SCSI configuration, it actually worked!  I could load both my sample banks off it sucessfully.

Part 2: Mounting the thing inside a TS-12

Of course it would be ideal to have the whole thing mounted internally.  I don't need to be able to swap Compact Flash cards in the forseeable future, so rather than chop into the TS too much, I decided to try to find a space for it inside.

note: if access to the reader is essential, one option would be to cut into the plastic floppy disk holder.  With the reader removed from its bracket, it would just fit.  It would be sticking out a bit, but it could be OK, and much easier then cutting through any metal.

Turns out in the TS-12 at least, there is a perfect spot:

in this shot, the jack output board was unscrewed, disconnected and flipped over (middle-left), and the vertical supporting bar unscrewed (6 screws). note the long screw mounting rail just above the floppy data cable.

The reader came mounted on a 3.5" (floppy) bracket, for mounting inside eg. a PC case, and this turned to be perfect.  In the spot I had in mind, there is a long screw mounting rail just where I need one - all I needed to do was drill two holes into my bracket along the right line, find two screws that would fit (I just examined one of the screws used for the display board that is attached to the same rail), and hey presto, a secure mount for my reader:

	I taped up the screws with gaffa (duct) tape so that they wouldn't short out anything on the reader board once mounted.
	with the reader installed.
	jack board and vertical support bar re-installed.

The next issue was power.  The reader takes both 5V and 12V using a standard PC floppy connector.  I wanted to power it straight from the keyboard naturally, but was worried about exceeding the internal power supply.  It seemed to me that I might aswell just try it - the worst that could happen is that I'd blow a couple of fuses on the supply, and then I'd know it wasn't gonna work : ).  My reasoning was that the floppy and the card reader are never accessed at the same time, and so I might just get away with it.

So at first I tried to tap off the existing floppy power connector.  Two problems - first, it only supplies 5V, and second, I couldn't get a reliable connection as there's just too little space inside the connector for soldering the cables on:

As i needed 12V from somewhere anyway, I decided to get both supplies from the digital board power connector instead.  This is on the board with the memory sockets, labelled 'Power':

According to my service manual, pins 5 & 4 should be 5V & ground respectively, and that's what I was seeing.

However the manual also said that 2 & 1 should be 12V and ground - however on my TS, 1 & 2 were both 12V, and 3 was ground (my TS is a more recent model though, as it already had OS 3.05 pre-installed, and the manual talks of older versions - so maybe they changed it?).

So this is how I ended up wiring it:

And this is how you wire a standard floppy connector.

And you know what, it works!  No fuses blown, no strange symptons (so far).

The final problem was how to connect the reader to the SCSI board.  I decided that I wanted to be able to access the reader externally without having to open the case up again (eg. to change the samples), and so I needed a SCSI connector somewhere on the case.

The easiest (for me) was to just cut a piece out of the bottom panel.  This is not as strong as the other connectors, which are internally attached to their own metal bracket that the panel just overlays - but I didn't have any cables long enough to mount one there, and it would have been much harder to try to cut through the internal bracket (for me anyway, with the right tools this might be easy).

So, armed with only a jigsaw and a cordless screw driver, I (eventually) managed to get a reasonable cutout:

Here from the inside with the SCSI connector attached:

Note: The cable I used (with a large SCSI2 style 50pin connector at one end, and a normal SCSI2 internal cable connector at the other) was from an old SCSI enclosure used for external CD-ROMs or similar devices.

And finally, the whole thing wired up:

Everything has worked perfectly for months (the glitches I mentioned in an earlier version of this page turned out to be a cable problem).  Very cool to have it silently load all my samples!