VS1880 with Zip Drive

[Waigwa]

Hi all,
I am on the verge of going down the Roland path, but discover that my local dealer does not have the hard drive cradle/bracket necessary to hold the hard drive in place within the unit. So, he is trying to sell me the idea of using a connected Zip drive for data storage until he gets delivery of some cradles/bracket from Japan, i.e. just buy the machine please.
Does this sound feasible in terms of speed of data transfer and in fact storage capacity on the Zip drive ?
I have been waiting a month already for one of these bloody cradles, so I'm now considering this interim solution whilst my creative juices are still flowing !
Cheers Waigwa

 

[johnboy]

Don't do it.

Purchase the unit from an on-line source, or go to Ebay and look for a used 1680 w/soundcards.

The unit should come from the US warehouse intact.That sounds kind of fishy to me, besides, I don't think an external zip will give you enough memory with an 18 track machine.

 

[Buck62]

Don't get anything smaller than a 2-gig jaz drive. If you're doing a song with more than 10 tracks, a zippo might not even hold that one song! I've seen it happen.
Why even bother with an out-dated Roland when the Akai DPS-16 has a HUGE 10-gig harddrive for about the same price? It's a MUCH better machine for the money.
Check it out at...
www.akaipro.com

Don't make the Roland mistake!

 

[Waigwa]

OK, maybee I should explain my situation- I live in Singapore and as it happens I can get the 1880 with 1 effects card and at least 10Gig HD for about the same price as the Akai DPS16. So I have to choose between:
Akai better definition and compatibility with other devices (CD-R etc). Roland has the better effects and sad as it may seem, can cliam industry standard and big user comunity etc. OK, call me chicken-shit, but I do get some comfort from the big user community etc especially when the price is the same.
The only other option I have been trying to hang on for is the Yamaha aw4461 which looks awesome. It will cost more, no doubt, but I believe this could put Roland's nose out of joint as far as their industry dominace goes, whereas Akai ?!?!? Not so sure.
Last complication, I move back to Europe in a month and so am in panic 'buy now cos it all costs twice as much back there' mode.
Any opinion on the aw4416 ? Has anyone used it ?
Also can the Akai be linked to any PC editing packages (like Roland can with Emagic etc) ?
Cheers Waigwa