BR-864 OS V1.02

[automatic-ocean]

hi there! i am new here and i must admit i mostly registered to ask if somebody has the br-864 v1.02 operating system to share? it seems to be impossible to find on the net. i am having some 80x speed cf cards which are not supported and i am hoping maybe the OS upgrade can fix it?

really liking this machine a lot, i can record much faster and better than with any pc DAW, lots of possibilities even if it is not the newest machine. i looked at some recent multitrack recorders and decided nothing can match with the 864, also it is very portable and has midi out.

[64Guitars]

hi there! i am new here and i must admit i mostly registered to ask if somebody has the br-864 v1.02 operating system to share? it seems to be impossible to find on the net. i am having some 80x speed cf cards which are not supported and i am hoping maybe the OS upgrade can fix it?

It used to be available on the Roland Germany and Roland UK websites but they have redesigned their sites and the links to the v1.02 update are broken. I suspect that it was never meant to be an official update. The last official update is v1.01 which is still widely available.

I once asked Roland why some updates are not available on all of the Roland websites and they gave me this reply:

"Regarding the updates - what seems to happen is that sometimes Roland Japan will issue an update that is not meant for public distribution - this is not because it is a secret, but because it does not affect any of the specifications of the unit. Sometimes they do this when they have to change a component or something technically about the unit, or have plans in the future to make a technical change. So we do see some updates that are marked as "for service usage only" and we don't put those up on the website. This is the case with the v1.11 for the BR-800, it looks like they changed an internal part and needed to change the OS to use it, but it did not change anything about the unit and it would not do anything to an older unit."

I suspect that v1.02 for the BR-864 was meant "for service usage only". If so, then any BR-864 that needs v1.02 would have shipped with it. Updating an older BR-864 to v1.02 will probably have no benefit.

In any case, the documentation for v1.02 says the only change was "improves the Song Optimize facility". So it's not going to help with memory card compatibility.

To find out which firmware version you currently have, see the following page. Maybe you already have v1.02. If not, then you probably don't need it.

https://songcrafters.org/64guitars/BR/Tutorials/FirmwareVersion.html

If you currently have v1.00 then you should update to v1.01 since it fixed a couple of bugs.

[automatic-ocean]

thank you for your help. i've seen that 1.02 is about the song optimize function, but i thought maybe other changes have been done aswell. i have updated it to 1.01 before i tried my CF card.

i have a 1gb "platinum" compact flash card which supports 3.3 and 5v, ebay page said they are 40x, on the net i found they are actually 80x. official info is that only 40x is supported, on some forums i found people that got 80x working aswell. i don't have a pc cardreader at the moment, maybe it helps to pre-format the card on my pc. all i get now is the "unsupported card" error.

i also like the idea of having one card for every song, i guess a 256mb card could be enough. so i just swap the card when i want to work on another song and have everything there (not a fan of digging the menus). any experiences with that? how much can the cardslot take?

[64Guitars]

i have a 1gb "platinum" compact flash card which supports 3.3 and 5v, ebay page said they are 40x, on the net i found they are actually 80x. official info is that only 40x is supported, on some forums i found people that got 80x working aswell. i don't have a pc cardreader at the moment, maybe it helps to pre-format the card on my pc. all i get now is the "unsupported card" error.

On a couple of Roland sites it's been mentioned that CompactFlash cards should be 45X or slower. I don't believe that. I can see no reason why faster cards should be a problem. I've been using a 60X SanDisk Ultra II (part # SDCFH-1024-901) in my BR-864 for many years and never had a problem.

Memory cards don't actually have a speed - they have a speed capability. The actual speed that data is transferred is determined by the BR, not the card. I don't know the BR-864's maximum transfer speed but let's assume that it's 40X. If you use a 45X memory card, the BR transfers data at 40X. If you use a 120X memory card, the BR still transfers at 40X because that's its maximum speed (for the sake of this discussion). So it shouldn't matter what the card's speed capability is as long as it's at least 40X. If it was slower than 40X, then there might be a problem because the BR would be trying to move data at 40X and the card wouldn't be able to respond fast enough. But a card that's capable of 60X, 80X, or 120X should be no problem as far as I can see. And a faster card means your backups will be faster when using a suitable USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 card reader attached to your computer.

If you're getting the "unsupported card" error, then you should probably get another card. Memory cards should always be initialized (formatted) in the BR before using them to record. Of course, if you're getting the "unsupported card" error, you can't initialize it. You could try formatting it on the PC but you must set the formatting parameters to FAT-16 with 16KB sectors. This might make the card usable in the BR but I doubt it because it's the card that the BR says is incompatible - not the format. And even if it works, you should still initialize it in the BR before using it. Even if you get this card to work, I think it will be unreliable. So it would be better to get another card that works more reliably.

In addition to the 1 GB SanDisk Ultra II, I have a Kingmax 1 GB (part # KCF-001G), a SanDisk 256 MB (SDCFB), and the 128 MB card from Roland that came with the BR-864. All of them work well in my BR-864.

i also like the idea of having one card for every song, i guess a 256mb card could be enough. so i just swap the card when i want to work on another song and have everything there (not a fan of digging the menus). any experiences with that? how much can the cardslot take?

Small cards are a good way of organizing your song projects but the extra wear and tear on the card connector could be a problem. I've heard of several users who bent pins on the card connector while inserting a memory card. Always insert the card perfectly straight and with a very light touch. When you feel that the pins are lined-up with the holes in the memory card, gradually increase your finger pressure to push the card all the way in.

Whenever you insert or remove a memory card, it's very important that the power is switched off. Otherwise, you will most likely damage the memory card and lose whatever songs were on it.

Small CompactFlash cards are extremely hard to find nowadays. Even 1GB cards are hard to find, but smaller cards are more rare.

For all of these reasons, I think it's impractical to use small cards. You're probably better off using a 1 GB card.

By the way, I'd recommend using my BR Song Librarian software. It makes it very easy to transfer individual song projects between your computer and the BR. When the card gets full, you can simply copy some of your older songs to the computer using BR Song Librarian, then delete them from the BR to reclaim the space. If you ever want to work on one of those older songs again, it's a simple matter to copy it back to the BR using BR Song Librarian. The alternative (and the only way mentioned in the manual) is to backup the entire card. But this leads to multiple backups containing copies of the same songs and you never know which backup has the most recent version. And when you want to restore a song, you have to copy the entire backup to an empty card. This is very inconvenient. So use BR Song Librarian instead and just copy individual songs rather than the whole card.

[automatic-ocean]

seems i cannot get my cards working, but i have an arrangement with the ebay seller to send them back. now trying to source other cards - this IS quite a journey... i have found some sandisk ultra II 1gb - do you know if ultra II is exclusively the SDCFH-*-901 type? then it would be easier to locate them, as most sellers do not type the exact name. also i found a transcend TS1GCF45I, the CF45 is in the boss compatibility list, the "I" type is an industrial grade version, so this could work.

still i am a bit concerned that i mostly only find used cards. has anyone experienced a failing flash card so far? when you record one take over and over - and delete it - it must be quite stressing for the flash cells.

also i have seen CF to sdcard adapters - could those possibly work (with 1gb sd cards)?

i wish i knew someone with a stock of several CF cards, so i just could go there and figure out which ones work, this is getting quite a bit of rocket science. i dont know if faster cards are not a problem, maybe once i find a 120x or faster card in a shop i could try this, at the moment i have to resource with ebay.

- yes the card would need to be initialized, but it does not do that as it is unsupported all the way.

ok i see the pins in the cardslot should better only be stressed when it has to be, not on a regular basis.

thanks for the tip with the song librarian, will look into that. at the moment i am using the "BR series wave converter" to pull my wave tracks.

too bad the br-864 has a quite small user count by now.



i have to include some rant-history why i am using this old gear:
i actually started digital multitrack recording using a yamaha aw-1600 (having woked with FLstudio on PC and a tascam syncaset analog setup before), but since i move a lot (working abroad) it was just too heavy, and it was very annoying to me to set it up when i want to record, it just had too much options.

then i went for a three week long review-spree and checked every digital recorder i could find - by tascam, fostex, zoom, boss, roland, yamaha, korg, electroharmonix... soon the decision was clear i will not want HD recording, as the HD could break in transport, also i read some bad reviews about some boss machines. then i looked at the new machines that record to SD card and was dissapointed, the machines are all "castrated", no more midi (in)/out, no more internal drumcomputer, sample functions... one machine even did not support measures, so you had to use the displayed time to copy parts! (iirc a newer tascam machine).

then the micro BR just was too small for me, seeming a bit like a toy. the zoom mrs-8 looked just perfect for "backpack" recording, as it is using sd cards - but it is missing an "undo" button (essential for me), also in the end the toy-ish look disturbed me also a bit - and: it was hard to find on the european used market.

older machines that used zip drives or smart media were not considered, as i felt these media are even more obsolete. at some point i considered the newer boss looping stations, but looking at it i am missing transport buttons; those machines are not for songwriting.

then i came across the br-800, but i read some reviews that the sensor buttons could fail, also i thought i would miss the tactile feel; and i want a music machine, not a apple-ish design. then i considered the br-900 - but was somehow disturbed by the cdrom which i never use. i saw there is not much difference to the br-864, not really considering if the faders would disturb me.

so i went for the br-864. as i recorded some demos by now i am happy with this machine, i rarely have to read the manual and it is a huge creativity boost. i can record songs in a direct zero latency, single button-press approach which is not possible with a DAW. marker and punch-in/out functions are genious. still i will export the tracks and add other layers in the DAW later, but as a creative notepad this thing is hard to beat. also i have (another...) guitar synth now which i would have missed on the br-900; and the possibility to hear distorted guitar but record clean signal i have never put to reality before so easily.
theoretically i can even use "mono in - stereo out" external effect units, if i pan the signal i want to process to the left (rest of the music to the right) and route the left line out into my effect, then re-record the signal in stereo. also recording four drone notes to the four tracks and re-recording them locally, using the faders to create arpeggio movements, is an effect i can not easily do on my other gear. i don't know if i missed out on some other great multitrack recorder with that size factor, but to me it seems these BR machines are a pinnacle point, after it things got worse again.

[automatic-ocean]

ok i got another card, sandisk ultra II 1.0 GB and it works perfectly! now i have all to start recording extensively