Alesis DATA DISK sequencer

[ToBiMaN]

Any experience with this machine?
I found one and liked the price...

Thanks!

[jrcel]

I have one and I love it, you can buy sequences for it from a couple of places, plus you can do all your sysex dumps to and fro. It takes DD disks which can be a bit hard to find. There was a thread on the TX16W list about usng HD disks and blocking out one of the holes wth tape, but I haven't tried this myself.

[This message has been edited by jrcel (edited February 03, 2001).]

[Mick Wade]

I have one also and I don't know what I'd do without it. It's basically the heart of my entire MIDI system. (Umm, sorry if that sounded a little flowery....) I use it for MIDI bulk storage and sequencer file storage and playback. jrcel, please bail me out here! I have a post under "Technical" titled "TD-8 MIDI storage questions" that refers to problems I'm having with the DataDisk that you seem to NOT be having problems with!! I've never used anything but 2HD disks for all purposes on it, and my TD-8 is the only device I have that it won't work with with respect to bulk file storage. What the hell am I doing wrong? If you could check my post and reply I'd really appreciate it!!

[jrcel]

I don't own a TD8 module, but here's a couple of things anyway. There may be too much data for the 800kb limit on the Data Disk to handle, or some midi modules require a "handshake" in which case you have to plug midi cable in the in and out midi ports or Roland is so proprietary that it wont do simple sysex dumps with anything except Roland devices but that's highly unlikely.

[Mick Wade]

jrcel, thanks much for the reply. You might be interested to know that of the two types of sysex dumps I've tried on the TD-8 (Drum Kit All and User Patterns & Songs), the most memory space used I've seen on any disk has been 35%. Haven't tried handshaking yet (maybe that's it--I'm just not polite enough), so I'll give that a whirl. As far as Roland not being that proprietary, I think I'd be a bit less surprised about that than you. It just seems that when Roland "recommends" that you use one product of theirs with another, you'd better do it and/or pay the price....Thanks again!

[ToBiMaN]

Thanks for the replies!!

I'd like to know some things about this machine:

Can you record/edit on a computer and save to a floppy disk and the play the sequence from the Data Disk? I mean, is it a compatible format? which format? *.mid?

If that does not work, is it possible to play the sequence from the computer and record it into the Data Disk with the same time signature, tempo and everything like the original stuff?

Thanks guys, if that works, I think I found a great machine for me...

[Mick Wade]

ToBIMaN, to answer your first question, floppy disks have to be formatted to the DataDisk itself before the DataDisk will use them. Because of that, I always just automatically assumed that saving a sequence to floppy on the computer and then trying to play it back on the DataDisk would require a reformatting, which would, unfortunately, erase everything on the disk. I always compose my sequences on an outboard sequencer (a cheesy but effective Yamaha QY10), then save it to the DataDisk as a MIDI sequence file. Whatever you program will play back just as you composed it, so this is the method I've used. In your case, the second option would seem to be the best one. Just go directly from your computer's MIDI Out to the DataDisk's MIDI In, and you should be in business. Let me know what you find out!!....

[ToBiMaN]

Thanks Mick!

This week I'll probably check out the Data Disk and I'll tell you if I buy it and then if it works with the computer...

Good luck!

[jrcel]

It would either use mfd 0 or 1 or doc files, I'm not sure which one.