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Drive replacement for Fostex DMT8-vl

The IDE hard drive on my Fostex DMT8-vl multitrack recorder shows signs of its imminent death; when getting hot, I could not record anymore. Must be said this drive comes from an old Sun Station, and has been replaced because I/O failures were detected by Solaris. It worked at least 5 years in my recorder: not so bad. However, time is now to replace it.

The DMT8-vl is not able to handle drives bigger than 8.4 GB. Well, it is able to (the current drive is 15 GB), but only 8.4 GB will be usable. My tought was to use a 8 GB CompactFlash; having no moving parts means no noise, which is quite temptating for a music recording device. I purchased a CompactFlash-IDE adapter on the internet (8$) and I had to build a male-male IDE cable adapter (4$). Unfortunately, this doesn't work. The drive is correctly discovered by the operating system, which proposes to format it ("format IDE?"). After answering "yes", the formating runs pretty fast (faster than on a real drive), and a countdown is displayed. But once done, a error breifly appears, and then "format IDE?" again. I put the CompactFlash on my PC reader, and all the data were still there. Another CompactFlash (4 GB) gave the same result. Better chance next time...


Update: power supply issue

I had another issue with with the Fostex; the hard drive does not always boot up. I've tried with mutliple drive, with the same result. I opened the unit and checked the voltage on the drive's power connector: 5V was okay, but I had only 10V in place of the required 12V. I unplugged the HDU, and the output of the voltage regulator shows the same result. Because I had too many dead stuff on my workbench, I closed the unit without doing more investigation. Strangely enough, it boots up every time now. My guess is a dry solder on the voltage regulator. Update: the issue comes from a faulty capacitor on the 12V regulator line.

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Comments

GastroBoy said…
Hello I have an DMT-8VL also. Have you succeed in the hard disk to CF replacement?
I'm interested.
Also, I am experiencing problems with channel 3 volume. What I recorded there is almost unaudible.
Has your unit ever experienced such a problem?
Thanks in advance.
Regards from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
15 March 2010 at 13:36
Francois Basquin said…
Hello, no I had no success with it. I suspect the CF protocol is somehow different than IDE. I'll try to get a IDE compatible SSD.
21 January 2012 at 01:06
Skinnymalinkmallogenlegs said…
Hi

I bought a Fostex SH and the disk is so loud it is unusable for record. I would like to put a 1" IDE SSD in it. Did you have any success doing the same.

Regards from Berlin
Phelim
30 January 2014 at 04:06
Francois Basquin said…
No, unfortunately, I didn't try that. Please give me some feedback...
25 September 2015 at 09:32
iamexodusnow said…
I have a fostex fd-108. I am going to try it with a ide to ssd. I read somewhere about making sure you have a cf card formatted with fat 16 instead of fat 32 which is what the newer ones are. I will check into this and let you all know.
19 January 2016 at 23:55
Francois Basquin said…
Not sure FAT16 could be a problem. FAT16 partitions could not be bigger than 2 GB. The DMT8vl "sees" up the 8.4 GB and 10 partitions, but can deals with bigger disks (mine is a 15 GB). I haven't check the speed of the CF; this could also be a potential problem.
6 October 2017 at 22:02
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