As I understand, effect settings (+ d-beam synth settings?) cannot be saved as part of the pattern/song. I was thinking, however; would it be possible to 'dump' these settings to an external sequencer, and then load them in later? (I'm not that smart on midi).

It's easy to record the motion of the effects in a sequencer but you are in deep sh*** regarding the change of the effect type...!
dbeam settings can be saved as far only for recalling one setting when you power off 606

unfortunately roland killed this dope machine...

So it's not possible to change efx settings via sysex commands? That sucks. Yeah, it's sad Roland didn't iron out some of the issues before they moved on. The same with the MC-909, which apparently has an unresolved bug concerning sustain in song mode. It's not just Roland that are guilty in abandoning products, but it's still a damn shame. I guess they could at least update the OS to store effect and d-beam settings without much problem, and probably resampling of patterns too (not to mention support for larger Compact Flash cards).