KORG Triton CF Upgrade

Tired of floppy and Jazz disks, I looked for a better storage solution to install in the Triton. I tried a Floppy-to-USB emulator and it worked well but the 1.44MB limit was still there. Although a bit more complex, using a SCSI>IDE adaptor and a IDE CF reader looked very well on paper. So I got a I-O Data R-IDSC-E/R adapter with firmware 1.30.9 and a IDE CF reader in a floppy drive form factor.

The CF IDE READER

The reader enclosure was shorter than a standard floppy drive and it also did not have threaded holes on the bottom surface, so it could not replace the old floppy drive directly. I had to drill three holes to it and to the keyboard’s bottom cover, and use a few washers to mount it so the faceplate fit to the floppy opening of they keyboar’ds case:

The SCSI>IDE Adapter

I wanted everything to be internal, so I could not use the 25-pin DB-sub connector on the back of the keyboard. I used a 50-pin flat ribbon cable, removed one end and soldered each wire directly to the PCB pads of the 25-pin sub-d connector. I dismantled the flat ribbon cable and built a harness to route the cable to the side of the keyboard where the floppy drive is located. You can see it going above the MOSS board (under that board once the keyboard is on its feet):

The adapter is designed to be attached to the back of an IDE hard disk, so it has no means to be mounted on a surface. For this same reason, it uses an unusual FEMALE connector, intended to be directly connected to the MALE connector present on IDE hard disks. I once again used a IDE flat ribbon cable, removed one end and soldered each one of the wires to the back side of the PCB, directly to the connector pads. To mount the adapter, I soldered two pin strips to a project PCB and glued it to the side of the plastic case. The (unused) IDE female connector of the adapter is attached to the pin strips and holds it in place. Again, I built a wiring harness that also included 5V power for the reader

Assembly and Testing

After making sure that the jumpers of the SCSI adapter were correctly set, I closed the keyboard and this is what the new drive looks like:

Note I did not install the old floopy drive or it’s flat ribbon cable. Everything works OK with it, I’ve only notice a slight delay after the first time the DISK screen is recalled. After choosing the SCSI drive, this is what appears in the MEDIA INFO page:

It is fast, works realiably and provides lots of storage for programs and samples. It can also be easily removed and accessed from a PC. You can’t ask for more, it is a tremendous improvement to this instrument.