does anybody have an ms1 or know about what cards it can take? i know the specs but...what cards have you bought/used with it and had no problems...thinkin of gettin one for those non home projects...any help is appreciated!!

i think these might work but not sure...they are to convert it to cf format which i read somewhere you can do but it also requires an update on thebios...
http://ec.transcendusa.com/product/prod ... awodzjjfdQ

Those adapters will work but the cards you put in them must be by SanDisk. No other brand will work. I've heard people putting 64MB cf cards with those in the MS-1, but only 40MB was read, which is the maximum anyway.

I do have the adapter, but I put a Kingston 16MB cf in it and the MS won't accept it. Cf cards of that size are extremely hard to find especially the SanDisk brand. I found a site on the subject, but I can't remember where, possibly RolandClan???

Yeah, it was at Sweetwater I read that.

Anyway, up to 128mb can be used with those adapters, the more ram you use, the more slow it takes for the MS to process it. 16 to 32mb would be best, but must be SanDisk.

On ebay, surprisingly they're cheap now, I just snagged a 16mb cf for $10. Every mb boost the memory by 1 min.

BTW, those adapters can only work if the MS-1 is upgraded to OS v 1.13, if its not then you'll have to hunt for the original SanDisk pcmcia flash cards. Luckily ebay got 9 of 20mb for sale at $48.00 each, which is good but not great of a price, considering that they were $299.99 when the MS first came out in '95.

cool thanx for helpin! i am seeing the issues if it doesnt already have the bios upgrade...if it doesnt than it turns into more money and a bit of a project to hunt everything down...i think ima hold off on the ms for now untill i really want one.

**UPDATE**

Its true that the adaptor (compact flash to pcmcia) will not work if the MS-1 is on the old OS, you'll definitely need the 1.13 update to use them. I put a 16MB cf card in it and it was in formatting mode for 6 hours, I turned it off and removed the card and turned it back on and the MS-1 was fine.

After all these years of owning the MS, I finally found a SanDisk PCMCIA 20MB card on ebay and it took not even a second to format it. The problem is that it doesn't boost the internal memory at all, its more like a storage for samples and the card can store 27 minutes of samples. You only can play one sample from the card and can't take advantage of the 4 polyphony. BUT you can play one sample from the card and play the other 3 polyphony on the internal memory and with mute groups you can cut corners.

Good news is that you can sample directly on the card, chop stuff up and then throw it in the internal. But shit is annoying to go back and forth.

The correct memory card for this is the SanDisk (SunDisk) PCMCIA ATA FlashCards. The specific part number must be SDP5 and are available in MB denominations of 1.8, 2.5, 5, 10, and 20.

I have managed to find an eBay seller who has one 10 MB SunDisk card and 19 20 MB cards with the proper SDP5 part number listed as compatible in the Roland MS-1's manual. What's weird is that the 20 MB cards are listed with a memory capacity of 24 MB, with 22.3 MB being its actual size.

I updated my MS-1 to 1.13 and bought a compact flash adapter from Ebay and a few different Sandisk compact flash cards(16mb and 64mb). I can get it to sort of work, but it freezes after doing any task(formatting,sampling,deleting) and I need to reboot it to continue but it works after the reboot. For example, if I try to delete a sample in the card bank the screen will freeze at "deleting" and I can't undo that without a reboot. When I do reboot the sample is deleted. The same thing happens when sampling. The screen freezes at "memory" but after shutting down and turning back on the new sample is usually there as it should be. Is this normal? It works in the end but it's kind of a pita having to shut the machine off and turn it back on after every task.

I know this is from 2009 - but I also have the same issue as you have described - I wonder if version 1.12 is any better?

Just wanted to chip in what I've found so far, these 32mb Sandisk branded type seem to work fine with the MS-1. They have SDP3B on the reverse.



They give a max. sample time in Bank C/D/E of 75mins at LONG2/MONO. Half that In STANDARD/MONO and around 11mins in HIGH/STEREO.

The 32mb CF card also works with a PCMCIA to CF adapter and gives the same sample time. This is all under Ver1.12 (96/03/21).

Couple of questions:

1. Has anyone tried using a PCMCIA to SD adapter successfully? If so, are there any brands of SD card that work better than others?

2. Has anyone come across a way of dumping samples kept on cards to a Mac or PC? I know you can do this via a SYSEX dump but was wondering if there are any utilities that read whatever Roland's card format is?

Thanks!

wow!

Actually more like 80mins at LONG2/MONO if you have no buffers set on the card.

This type also work (SDCFB on the reverse), although it still provides the same max. sampling time as the 32mb type so there's a fair bit of wasted space obviously:



The "Formatting..." prompt hangs but if you leave it for a few seconds and reset the MS1 the card seems to work fine. Could therefore mean that these aren't quite so reliable as the red / white logo SDP3B type.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-SanDisk-4G ... 0891.m5206

Would this work as far as MS-1 cards are concerned??