VS 880EX

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DaChasman

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NOTICE!!!!!
the 880 EX that Musicians Friend is advertising with a 6.1 gig H.D. is misleading!!! Dont be fooled, The unit is only capable of using 3.5 gig. I spoke with Roland an the drive is in fact a 6.1 gig but the 880 can only use 3.5 gig which leaves 2.5 Gig completely useless.
Nasty marketing trick by Musicians Friend.
 
I was just about to post that question at the Planet as it's too late to call Roland today and I too just saw that item in the latest Musicians Friend. Can anyone go into more depth of explanation? Like what's really happening with that scene?
 
Musician's Friend is trying to fool people with some slick marketing scam, that's what it looks like to me.

The VS880 can use a up to 4GB, last time I heard, with four 1GB partitions.
 
The 880EX does indeed see only 4gigs but having a larger harddrive than the unit will recognize is actually a benefit to you. You get 2.1gigs of headroom. Less chance of errors or crashes due to a drive that's filled to near capacity.

BTW, hi all. Nice BBS! :)
 
Hey,headroom my ass, The 880ex uses low-level partitions which act as individual drives. I dont know if your a spokesperson for musicians friend but no matter what, if you use the 4 1gig parrtitions all the way up, your drive will crash, 2.1 gig "headroom" or not!!

On a more positive note:
I complained directly to Musicians friend management and they have agreed to send me a iomega scsi zip drive to make up for there misleading advertisement, they also said that they will update the site to provide a more accurate description of the 880ex.

All in all ----- a great unit!!!! Completly satisfied A++!!!!!
 
Spokesperson? BWAHAHA!!! :eek: :p :D Sorry, never even bought anything from Musicians Friend, let alone be their spokesperson.

All I know is, when I first got my EX it had the 3.1Gb harddrive and it gave me nothing but trouble... drive too slow and drive busy messages, freeze-ups, and finally an all out crash. I replaced it with a 6.1Gb and ran it to the max for 3 weeks straight and never once got an error, freeze-up, or crash. It's been 6 months since I replaced the drive and I still haven't had any trouble with it.

I'm no computer geek. It just makes sense to me that if the drive can't be physically filled to near-capacity, that can't be a bad thing, can it?
 
Hey r2d2!

I saw the movies...you're a tough little droid! (and evidently old, uh, I mean immortal!)

Anyway, when you replaced the drive, was that with an internal or an external and is it just like doing the same thing on a 'puter?

DaChasman: headroom, huh?

No, seriously, MF sent you a ZIP DRIVE for exposing a scheme? I don't know about you guys, but I'm goin' huntin' for mistakes in catalogues
 
ditnoj: The VS series come with 2-1/2" laptop IDE harddrives. Most are Hitachi brand. They're easy to change. The drive is in a pull-out encasement. You just remove the plate from the front of the VS, take out the 2 screws that hold the harddrive assembly in, and slide it out. Getting the harddrive out of its encasement can be a little tedious but with a little patience and gentle persuasion it pops right out. You have to remove the mounting screws and the connection adapter before you take it out of the encasement. All in all, it's a fairly simple procedure.

May the force be with you! :p
 
r2d2...no shit? We can actually use a none Roland hard drive and it will work without any probems?
 
I wouldn't go as far as to say that any harddrive will work, but I do know that many brands of laptop drives work. Even 3-1/2" harddrives will work but I've heard it's quite a hassle getting them mounted into the VS.

It's also possible to hotrod the VS (at least the 880's and 1680) by installing a SCSI drive and a IDE drive. There's a SCSI connector right beside the IDE connector on the board inside the VS.

I took my old 880V-Exp apart, moved the harddrive over to the corner, and mounted my SCSI jaz 2gig in it. When I booted it up I had SCSI-0:0, SCSI-0:1, and IDE-0 for drives. I had no problem moving songs around, recording, or editing on any of the partitions. The only thing I couldn't do was burn a CD from the jaz. The song has to be on the IDE drive to be able to burn CD's.

Most useful item for hotrodding your VS... ducttape! :p

Me thinks I have too much time on my hands sometimes! :D
 
DaCashman is talking bollocks.
I have my VS880EX for a more than a year now and it works without problems.
You can set up the HARD-drives in partitions of 500MB, and 1 Giga partitions with a maximum of 4 partitions of 1 Giga.
My hard drive has 5 Gig and never gave any problems. A part of the memory is used virtually. When my 4 Giga is completly full, I can still back it up to my CDRII drive.

That is were the extra space comes in handy. To write CD's the VS880EX creates an image of that CD before it starts burning. What you should understand is that you can only record 4 GIGA of Music on the Internal drive, but you can connect upto 6 extern hard drives, over the SCSI connection, with that same capacity. That comes to a total of 24 GIGS of recording capacity. Please come back for more. Toshiba seems to have compatible drives for Roland VS recorders. I'm not sure about any IDE connectors, so I won't go into that.
For more info you could try a search on: < http//www.vsplanet.com > and type "Drive".

[This message has been edited by Hano (edited 06-23-2000).]
 
Who cares Musicians friend sent me a Zip Drive for just raising the issue. I was told by Roland that the 2.1 Gig of extra space was "completely useless" on the 880EX. I"ll go with what they say. No dought the unit works great I love it. Recording is simple its tyhe mastering I'm working on know... CYA

Pe@ce
 
There have been cases over at the "other" website of Roland reps. from all over the world dishing out innaccurate information to unsuspecting VS user.

I hate to say it, but you should probably take info. from a Roland rep. with the largets of grains of salt.
 
The first Roland VS880Ex that came out in Belgium was loaded with a 2.1 Giga drive in June 1999. Why would they still sell any with that same configuration today?

In the shop were I got mine in August'99 they had a 5 Giga drive installed to be able to keep the prices the same for a while. That was instructed by Roland BeNeLux.
 
I'm glad that there is no similar antique shop like musicians friend in Belgium.!!![/b] :eek: :p :D
I guess when you buy old Fender guitars there should be no problem. Where I'm very doubtfull is were I read they sell modern technology configurations who are outdated already for more than 1 1/2 year.

The software should be at least at 2.005 as standard software for today.

Feels unsure if (so called)friends who using the word music, are the same that I relate to as musical friends.
 
while we are on the subject of muscians friends i just wanted to say f- - - them!!!!!
did you guys know they merged with guitar center? guitar center sent me a postcard for the memorial day sale. i get there and ALL THE PRICES ARE THE SAME AS BEFORE!!!!!!! what kind of sale is that? i ended up buying an alesis amp i NEEDED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
$299 is the price i have seen it for in EVERY MAG, STORE OR WEB SITE. they had it on sale for $299. no deals nothin. i will never shop there again. NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
as far as hard drive space is concerned i only use the the 0 drive i dont use 1 2 or 3 partitions i back my stuff up on cd and then i erase it. i initalize every month. i have the vs 880 ex with the original burner and the os is the version with the mtks i updated one more time to fix the track five bounce problem. (it may be 2.03) i have never had a crash. no freeze ups. the only bug was the track 5 glitch. all in all its a cool machine.


mac goD

ps hano are you following me?

:) :) :)
 
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