Q) What type/capacity hard disk should I buy for my AKAI?
Q) What's the maximum storage capacity indexed by the AKAI OS?
Q) Can I have 2 different O.S. partitions on my HD so I can share my SCSI drive with my
PC?
A) The AKAI's (s2000/3000/3200XL) O.S. currently indexes not more than 510MBytes of space - and talking about space, the maximum partition dimension is 60MBytes. There is no use in buying a 2GB HD because the rest of the space will never be used under AKAI OS at the moment and you cannot even create a double partition in order to use the rest of the unindexed space for your PC because it is completely incompatible with AKAI's OS way of working.
Q) Can I then access my samples/programs on my HD directly from my PC?
A) Well "yes and no". MESA II PC is a "remote control" application which means to say that what you see is a remote projection of what you are editing and so the samples you see are still in your AKAI. When you save a sample to your AKAI disk, MESA is instructing the AKAI to do this via normal sysex commands (via SCSI though) so it will always save and load from AKAI media directly. However, MESA does give you the possibility to EXPORT or IMPORT wav files to and from your PC by simple drag and drop (or with the menu). This operation effectively transports the AKAI sample or program data from your AKAI memory through your SCSI bus to your PC HD - ofcourse the opposite works also. So do not think that you will be able to access your AKAI disk directly as if it were a PC disk once MESA is installed - this has nothing to do with the way your PC can interpret the proprietary AKAI DOS. What you will be able to do is read the contents of your AKAI media (HD/CD/MO) using your AKAI as "slave". For ex. you want to load a sample from your AKAI HD to your PC, this does not happen in one go: in MESA you load the sample into the AKAIs memory (MESA tells the AKAI to do this via sysex) then from the AKAI's memory you SCSI xfer it to your PC. You cannot directly xfer an AKAI sample or program from an AKAI media to your PC without passing through the AKAI with MESA - this is not MESA's purpose (nor any other remote control/editing software like Millenium). In other words, to effectively xfer AKAI data to your PC you *need* a supported AKAI as intermediary. Currently there is no program that can write to an AKAI formatted media from your PC even if there are utils that can read them.