Have you looked at the Fostex stand-alone hard disk recorders? I think they still sell the VF80 with CD-R burnder for around $700-800. The Fostex MR8, which generates a lot of threads on the Fostex section of this BBS, is also within your budget ($299?) but you would have to add an external burner. (I think the unit has USB out so that you can transfer to a PC, edit, and burn using a computer CD-R.)