Brewsterware

November 18, 2009

How to replace a floppy drive in a yamaha EL90 with a USB drive

Filed under: Organs,Yamaha Electones — Tags: , — Joe Brewer @ 6:55 pm

I’m afraid I dont know how to do this, but I do know that there is a drive available which is a direct replacement. If you’ve found this article it’s likely that you have an older EL series organ that has issues with the floppy drive. Yamaha, in their infinate wisdom, chose to use a non standard 3.5″ drive that costs £100+ for the early EL series (EL60, EL70 and EL90). Why couldnt Yamaha have used a standard 3.5″ PC floppy drive on these organs? Who knows?

Recently this post offered a solution for modifying a standard PC disk drive with a few componants and a bit of soldering, but I dont really want to go this route.

Then I found out about EL-USB, a replacement drive that takes USB sticks. Finding any information about this drive is pretty difficult as most of the sites are in chinese, here is one example: http://www.gangqinwang.com/news.piano?id=4697 . I’ve also seen the drive on ebay.com.hk but unfortunately the auctions that I found had finished.

If anyone has any information on the EL-USB or are after one as well please post a comment.

August 19, 2008

are the organfax forums dead

Filed under: Music,Organs,Rants — Joe Brewer @ 5:22 pm

I’ve tried registering several times with this forum, but to no avail.  They just wont have me.  Registration requires a moderator to review your application before you can post, and my application has been waiting for months with nothing even so much as a whisper.  Has my account been denied?  I’ve no idea, and emails to the webmaster ([email protected]) asking about my account seem to have disappeared into the ether.

This website was once a fantastic thriving community of enthusiasts.  Originally developed by Margaret Falkner – a truly great figure on the UK home organ scene, and a huge inspiration to many people.  Sadly, she passed away several years ago.  Remembered by many – such a shame I cannot add to this post to her memory.

Unfortunately the market of the home electronic organ is in a bad state.  Manufacturers insist on producing organs for the elderly, the incompetent, or people who just don’t want to put in any time or effort to improve their playing.  Take the absolutely dreadful Yamaha AR100 and AR80.  For a start, their cabinets look low quality sticky back plastic covered chipboard – hardly what you would expect for the circa £8000 you would have had to have paid when they came on to the market.  A console that is just so full of automatic accompaniments that it is more difficult to switch them off and just play something simple.  Sound quality that is so horrible.  And to top it all off, a speaker system that is more powerful than a professional instrument such as the EL90.

Manufacturers should be targeting and encouraging younger people to buy these instruments, not people that wont be here in 20 years.  So sad.

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