Dive too busy

[Fosburelli]

hi everybody! I just want to ask if the "drive too busy" is a common problem as i read on the net, have you ever had this problem on your sp808?
thank you!

[l i f]

Hey and welcome!

The drive-too-busy is what defines the 808 bro

This thread: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=21688 carries a link to the cumulative wisdom of all SP808 users in the form of a users manual written by users (not roland) that in the latter pages describes some workarounds for this problem that from memory involve playing back performances at a lower (therefore slower) sample rate so that the drive has more time to read tricky timings, or (i think, from memory) using "audio record" as opposed to "realtime" (i may be wrong on this...)

My way around it is I hardly ever use the multitrack side of the unit, rather build up variations by resampling to pads in realtime - I never use the sequencer/quantize, so I avoid the drive-too-busy that way.

Are you an owner or a prospective buyer? 808 is a great unit - highly recommend the manual otbt posted the link to.

[Fosburelli]

thank you! i downloaded the file, im an owner btw

[Pip Molinsky]

So I worked on a beat yesterday the whole afternoon which consists of audio recordings on the tracks A, B and C. So no event recording with short pads samples or fast notes and stuff. I had the beat running literally for hours without any problem. After dinner I got back and re-recorded the drums on track B. Now every time I play back the beat I get the "Drive too busy" message at about bar 14. Every fucking time. After the message showed up it won't play any of the tracks and one of my pad samples stops right in the middle. After pressing the scrub button I can play back the tracks again. But it will still stop at bar 14.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?
Is it just my zip disk that's fucked up?

It's actually the first time I'm using the 808 to record a track and I quite liked working on the machine until this fuck happened.

[l i f]

Sounds like the disc has an issue.. they can be tempramental.

Like, I've noticed over the years variations in discs and disc quality/longevity.. sometimes a new disc will crap out in a week or two, sometimes they can be written/rewritten on for years without issue.

I got back and re-recorded the drums on track B.

This may have been the catalyst - re-recording over a track.

Lost work sucks and I feel for you..

I was going to suggest that maybe you try a disc-cleanup and see if that helps.. mbe it will allow you to play beyond bar 14?


If you can bounce the tracks A, B, C separately to pads, start a new song, delete the one that appears fucked up, then cleanup the disc again maybe you can bounce the pads back to the multitracker afterwards?

The trick of bouncing while the Vari-pitch is set to 25% is probably worth trying too... like that tips & tricks manual states, it gives the disc more time to run processes and will sound fine when brought back up to desired pitch.

But keeping zip-discs de-frag'ed I think is the best preventative medicine. Discs that act up will damage your drive and compound the problems.

Like I said in my post above, I just don't even fuck with the multitracker... I track out to other sp's or to 4-track cassette.. waiting for that cf-card solution to materialise before I go back there, since otherwise a reliable stereo multitracker in the 808 would be boss.

[Pip Molinsky]

Hey lif,

thanks for your answers.

I was going to suggest that maybe you try a disc-cleanup and see if that helps.. mbe it will allow you to play beyond bar 14?

I just did the cleanup twice. First the quick one and then standard but the issue remains. It's really the disk, I guess. I tried to start playback at several positions after bar 14 but it won't play at all. Scrubbing does work, so I may give bouncing with vari-pitch on a try... but perhaps it's easer to recreate the beat on a new disk.