New Ddrum3 Owner. PCMCIA card? Windows xp?

[jason]

I just bought a ddrum3 and I am very excited to put it to use. It arrives in a week and I wanted to make sure I was ready to go when it arrives.

I comes without any cards so I assume I will have to aquire some to use the module.

My question is can I use a PCMCIA adapter card or do I have to buy a certain kind of card?

Also, I have a pc with windows home version that I use to transfer samples to my Ddrum4. Can I use that with Soundforge to get samples on my new ddr3?

Also, what size cards can I buy? Is there a limit?

Also, is there anything else I need? Would it be easier/better to find an old mac as oppose to my pc?

Thank you so much for the help

[kenjwright]

Congrats on your purchase!

The dd3 is very specific about the card type. It must be Linear Flash PCMCIA and they are getting difficult to find. Ebay mostly, and can be a crap shoot finding the appropriate cards. Avoid ATA Flash as they are not compatible. Terminology can get confusing as well. The manual states "Type 1", "Intel Compatible", and " Series2+". PCMCIA cards have 3 form factors; Types I, II, III. Type I are 3mm thick and in my experience so far are the most compatible. Type II will fit (5mm) and I have had varying degrees of success with these. Type II introduced support for peripherals so compatibility depends on how closely manufacturers followed the standards at the time. A quick test is to insert the card in the dd3 and try to format it. If successful you're good. If not it will display "wrong memory type". 64MB is the maximum card size that can be used.

Regarding SCSI, a great solution for transfers is discussed here and here .
Note that this only provides for single sample transfers like MIDI does but is of course, much faster. And platform agnostic (Mac, Windows, Linux to write to the sd card).

Your Windows PC will work fine for MIDI transfers.

To transfer the native dd3 single or multi-sample files you’ll need either the ancient Mac solution with the ddrum3 SCSI transfer utility or a special USB to PCMCIA Linear Card reader. I’ve been working with the OmniDrive USB2 LF/SD which currently can be used for backup and restore of the cards to a PC. I’ve also been working on software to create ddrum3 pc-card images which will eliminate the old Mac dependency and allow creating the banks on a PC and then transferring to a PCMCIA card using the OmniDrive.

Cheers!

Ken

[jason]

OMG!!! Thank you so much for he information!!!!

I found this on ebay? Sounds like it fits the bill? What do you think.

Cisco 24MB PCMCIA Type 1 16-Bit Linear Flash Card MEM-C6K-FLC24M 16-1837-01

[kenjwright]

The description looks good so worth a try. Some sellers accept returns, but if not, I just try one and accept the risk and extra shipping for more if it works.

Good luck!

Ken