Removable Media Drives

CD-ROMs - Most are compatible. One exception is NEC drives - most older NEC drives will not work, although newer NEC drives are reported to work. Problems have also been reported with the Plextor 12x CD-ROM.

* For versions of the K2000 3.18 or earlier and the K2500 2.13 or earlier, drives must be able to support 512 bytes per sector. Drive mechanisms from the following manufacturers are known to support this format: Sony, Toshiba, Chinon, Plextor, Aiwa, and Matsushita. (Chinon drives not compatible with a K2000 with v2 or earlier.) Faster speed may not work in these older versions of the OS - you may have to look for an older, slower speed drive.


CD-ROM Speed - Most of the newer, faster drives will work, but will not perform any faster than slower models.

* For the K2600, and the K2500 starting with v2.52, drives up to 8x will perform faster than a slower version. Drives faster than 8x will function correctly but not perform faster.
* For the K2000 with v3.87, drives up to 4x will perform faster than a slower version. Drives faster than 4x will function correctly but not perform faster.
* For versions of the K2000 previous to 3.87, and versions of the K2500 previous to 2.52, drives faster than 2x will not perform any faster than a 2x drive.


Writeable CD-ROMs - supported in newer versions of the operating system for reading disks only. You can't burn a CD from the Kurzweil. Our page on Burning a CD-ROM disk contains more details.

* Supported for the K2600, the K2500 with versions 2.88 or higher, and K2000 version 3.87.
* Not supported for versions of  the K2500 previous to 2.88 or the K2000 previous to 3.87.


Iomega (Bernoulli, Zip, and JAZ) - Compatible. However, these drives are designed so that they go to sleep if the cartridge is not accessed after a specified time.

* For versions of the K2000 3.18 or earlier and the K2500 2.13 or earlier, this auto sleep function will cause the Kurzweil to lock up, either immediately or when Load is pressed. To avoid this problem, eject the disk when not in use. This prevents the drive from going into sleep mode, and therefore prevents the lockup.


Syquest - Compatible.

Orb - Compatible

Magneto Opticals - Most 230 Meg drives and cartridges are compatible. Media must be hard formatted as 512 bytes per sector. Larger drives use a format of 1024 or greater bytes per sector and therefore will not work.

Tape Based Drives - Not supported.