CD Burners

[Keystone]

Hi! I recently bought a used VS880ex, and I'm really happy with how it's working out for me. It's so cool how it syncs up with my old Roland MC 500 Sequencer.

I need something to backup the VS 880 data, and am looking at CD burners. I would like to be able to both store the data, and mix down to the CD burner.

I'm hoping to buy a used one - there are a lot of internal CD burners for sale in the recycler for under $200.00.

I imagine I will be coming out of the VS with a SCSI cable. How does that connect with the CD burner in the computer?

Does it mean anything that some of the CD burners say they are SCSI?

Is my AST Pentium 1 computer, with a 1 gig hardrive and 16 megs of RAM, sufficient to handle a CD burner? One guy who's selling one told me the manual said that would be OK.

I've seen so many brands! Creative Labs, Teac, Yamaha, Memorex, Plextor, HP, JVC and more. Are there some that are not good? Are some better than others? Anything I should watch out for?

Is there software I will need, too?

Also, can I install it in the computer myself in the space where the CD ROM is now? I don't have any experience doing that kind of thing, but wonder if I could figure it out...?

Thanks so much for any help you can give me! This is a great forum!!!

[Larry Sheehan]

YOU MUST USE A SCSI BURNER with the Roland.
Sorry to shout, but at least 1 person I know of blew his VS1680 up attaching a parallel CD to the SCSI port.

Next, the CDR burner can't be just any old brand, Roland has supported only 2. SCSI CDR drives don't have a standard command set yet, so each requires it's own software driver.

The only model still in production which is supported by the ROland is the plextor. I can't remember the exact model number, but go to www.vsplanet.com and search for plextor for good accurate info.

Unfortunately, you can't back up data to your PC from the Roland directly, so you're pretty much locked into the SCSI CDR.