Install guide for AKAI OS2.0 and tips for use with WIN9x

Q) How can I upgrade my Sampler's OS to V2.0?

A) Firstly, go onto the AKAI's page in the support section and choose the appropriate version of the new OS for your type of sampler. Then, if you have a 3000/3200XL you will hae to download a little utility called OSMAKER from the same site in order to actually create your OS disk. The files you have just downloaded are in a zip format so you will have to unzip them in a directory. Then, under DOS or even a DOS prompt, type "osmaker" and you will be prompted to select which type of OS you want to put on a floppy; if you have unzipped only one OS for just one type of sampler, you will be shown only one possibility which is "1". So type in the number corresponding to the OS and have a blank diskette prepared in your 3.5"drive. The OSMAKER utility will then start formatting subsequently writing the new OS to your floppy. Once the process has terminated, you can insert the floppy in your AKAI and power on. If everything has gone well the akai will soon display "Loading OS 2.0" and will load the new OS. If you don't want to keep on loading the OS from floppy (it's quite taedious and slow) you can simply save it to the first partition and volume of your mass storage media (HD/ZIP/MO etc) so your AKAI will automatically load it at each power on.

Q) I'm getting write errors in creating my OS disk with OSMAKER what can I do?

A) If you cannot successfully write an AKAI OS disk with OSMAKER and you have checked that your floppies are formatted and 100% defect free, try the process again after having booted into DOS mode without processing your config.sys and autoexec.bat with the F8 key. If you still have no success then you could have a hardware incompatibility between your Floppy Disk Drive/controller and the software. These softwares bypass normal disk access procedures (like teledisk) and sometimes have trouble in indexing at hardware level your floppy resulting in bad sector "writes" - this causes the verify errors. It is not your drive's fault but a mere incompatibility. There are only two solutions: AKAI writes a patched software or you try the utility on a different PC. I have not yet encountered this problem with any of my PCs but having only clones and thus "very" standard floppy controllers and drives might have been the reason of my success.

Q) Windows has recognised (finally) an unkown device after I installed the new OS on my AKAI, is this normal?
Q) Windows is asking me for some driver disks which I don't have, what should I do?

A) After you have updated your AKAI's OS to 2.0, win95's aspi32 will be able to recognise your AKAI directly without any pain and frustration:). The first time you boot win95, it will "see" your AKAI's "host adapter" and will prompt you for the driver disks. Don't worry, just click on OK and win95 will not ask you again for this driver - you don't actually need any, all it needs is the aspi32 part working:). The only thing you will notice is that in your control panel->system->devices window you will see an unkown device with a question mark that actally is your AKAI. That's the only "drawback" in not having the INF driver to update windows's registry entries. On the next section you will find how to remove this question mark.