Trying To Restore My Roland SP-808

[Danswift]

I ran this test on my old Roland SP 808 which hasn't worked properly for years after a guy on another site suggested it as it turns out we were experiencing the same issue with our respective machines.

Everything that has a backlight on the sampler was illuminated every time I switched the power on before and the screen just displayed squiggly lines and wouldn't boot up the Roland SP 808 and groove sampler Ver 1. 0 graphics. 

 

The guy sent me this link to try and solve the problem although he said it hadn't worked for him unfortunately so I wasnt very hopeful I'd have much luck either. 

 

http://www.angelfire...psandtricks.htm

 
It cleared up everything on the machine and it now looks like this again.







Its missing one or two faders but I actually still have those in a box somewhere kicking around.


I don't have a working zip drive for this sampler anymore unfortunately so I can't try to implement the next stage of the process which allows me tosave the operating system from an 808EX, and to update the original SP-808 but im a lot more optomistic about the possibility of getting this thing up and running again than before as its a very powerful piece of sampling gear with a brilliant set of FX and a built in 4 channel digital multi track recorder (when it actually works correctly). 

As I'm sure some of you folks here will know Zip drives are notoriously unreliable and prone to the dreaded 'Disc Read Error' warning but It's also possible to swap out the card reader from the blue colour version of an Akai MPC 2000 in place of the 808's zip drive as they both have a 40 pin header although they're pretty expensive to obtain from the MPC Parts website so I've heard.. A couple of dudes I know have done this and their SP-808's haven't had any issues whatsoever since.
 
Wish me luck people! .


Beats & Stuff

https://danswift.bandcamp.com/track/her ... -album-mix

https://soundcloud.com/user-58305257


 

[FreshTrooperXBL]

I hope you get it up and running. I just picked up an SP 808 OS. 1.0 and I know what you mean with the ZIP drive.

[ZipSnipe]

You can still get Zip Drives on Ebay. I also want to point out that not all zip drives are problematic, I have 3 808's and all of them (knocks on wood) have been fine as far as the zip drive goes.

I also researched getting away from Zip Drives , it can be done but the adapter to switch to smart cards is soooo freaking rare and usually very expensive. I even toyed around with the idea of learning machine code so I could re write the bootloader code so that the 808 could adapt to more modern storage but gave up as I realized I wouldn't be making music anymore I would be lost in machine code land

[Danswift]

You can still get Zip Drives on Ebay. I also want to point out that not all zip drives are problematic, I have 3 808's and all of them (knocks on wood) have been fine as far as the zip drive goes.

I also researched getting away from Zip Drives , it can be done but the adapter to switch to smart cards is soooo freaking rare and usually very expensive.

Not sure if you're aware ZipSnipe but you can also swap out the Zip Drives for the card reader from the blue colour version of the Akai MPC 2000 , it uses the same 40 pin header as the SP -808/808 EX.

I know a couple of folks who've done this swap and their SP's have worked like a charm with no issues whatsoever.
The only problem is these card readers are usually sold through the MPC Stuff website and the prices being asked for them is usually pretty high.

I suppose second hand and/ or pawn shops could be worth checking out first though if anyone is planning to do this conversion.

https://danswift.bandcamp.com/track/her ... -album-mix

https://soundcloud.com/user-58305257