Hello Richard!
I am good thanks. Nice to hear from you.
It’s been a year since I left AMS now so I might be out of touch with current developments but as regards the AudioFile SCX most recent platform I was involved with, the upgrade actually replaces your entire SC computer and 8U mainframe with a single 4U box which contains the PC motherboard and the proprietery AMS SCX hardware. This single box countains hard drives and connects to the Spectra controller.
The I/O is solely MADI on the rear of the unit.
The early SCX upgrades attempted to retain the 8U mainframe and replace the PC motherboard and much of the hardware in the mainframe with the SCX hardware. This turned out to be much to complex to do in the field and I came up with the idea of housing everything in a single 4U box. So – whilst it is called an “upgrade”, in fact you replace everything except the Spectra. Having said that, it was priced quite reasonably considering what you were getting.
Some of the latter improvements to this platform included using Solid State drives instead of SCSI and also including a Blu-ray burner.
Mike