Tools for data exchange between a Linux PC and AKAI samplers

About

Welcome to the homepage of the Lakai project. This project deals with the development of tools that ease the transfer of data between the Akai Sxxx series of samplers (S1000, S2000 etc) and a PC running (ideally) Linux, but if people are able to port this to other Un*xish operating systems like FreeBSD, NetBSD or others, they are welcome to contact me.

Not much has been done so far - I have collected all kinds of information about the samplers, the disk format, SCSI programming through the SCSI generic (/dev/sg*) device. I hope this project will evolve into a collection of any kind of valuable information for people planning to make music with the assistance of Linux.

The main programming target for now is to come up with an API for a small library that will do most of the low-level communication stuff - liblakai. After this, a small shell tool that lets you do quick complete backup /restore operations from/to the sampler will be written, later probably followed by a more graphically appealing program editing application a la Mesa (the editor that Akai gives out for free for Windows-based systems).
There are a lot of other ideas in my head - I write them down in the "Brainstorming" section of this page.

As for the rest of this page, just browse along and explore. All pages are rather simple and come with little graphics to make browsing quick even through small-bandwidth modem lines. Also, I tried to avoid any browser-specific extensions.

Motivation

### Why I started out on this...TBD