"Is there any way to play or transfer songs recorded on my Boss BR8 (100meg zip) disks to any other machine or computer? I would like to back up more than 2-3 songs to one storage media if possible. Plus I'd hate to find out after I have 200 songs on disk that when my machine breaks I can no longer play the recordings. Any clues?"

You can copy the data to a Mac or PC. Actually the procedures outlined below will work with any of the Roland VS series recorders.

To get it to a PC just put it the disk in any ZIP drive connected to your PC and copy it to the hard drive.

To get it to a Mac, you will need Dos Mounter 95 and MultiMounter extensions. Disable any other kind of CD/Hard Drive/Zip/Jaz etc... Driver except Dos Mounter 95 and MultiMounter. (If you accidentally leave one on, the Mac will not mount (recognize) the Zip from the BR-8). Pop the BR-8 cartridge into the Zip drive on the Mac and drag the image to the hard drive.

After you do this, on the PC or the Mac, you can then use a CD burner program to burn a CD of the disk images (not an audio CD, but a backup data CD).

If you really want to get audio from the BR-8 that is playable by the computer the only way to do that is to upgrade to a VS-840GX and convert the disk to a .wav disk. Also, for what it's worth, we've seen VERY few problems with any of Roland's VS recorders (BR8 included). Your machine may outlast you!