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A friend brought me an old Zoom MRS-1044... It's a 10 track "studio in a box" thing from 2001ish. It would boot and record/play audio, but the drum machine and bass synth were non-functional.
This thing has no digital connectivity beyond SPDIF out... It has a slot for an optional USB interface, but I looked, and a used one was selling for $200!
The firmware for it was available on Zoom's site, but I suspected that its issues were because of additional data missing from the disk. It contains a 20GB 3.5" IDE drive.
I scarfed all of the documentation and software I could find. In the docs for the USB card, I found procedures for drive formatting, and factory restore. The restore process required copying data via the USB card from a PC, using a restore CD which came with the USB card.
Pulled the drive, and connected via a USB-IDE adapter. Yes! FAT32! The USB card manual had an overview of the filesystem structure, and sure enough, all of the data for the synths was missing.
I spent an hour or so searching the crevices and shadowy parts of the 'Net trying to find this stuff, to no avail. I finally decided to send Zoom's North American contact an email asking for help. I had little faith in this course of action, with a 20 year old product.
This morning, when I crawled out of bed, I found a response awaiting me:
Wow. Way to support your products, guys! Definitely going to keep @ZoomSound on the radar when I need portable recording gear in the future!
I dumped the files from the ISO to the hard drive, stuck it back in, and fired it up. Alas, no luck: "SysFile not found" ... No boot. I poked around quite a bit, comparing what was previously on the drive, and after quite a bit of fiddling...
... I discovered that it doesn't like having more than one .ZEX file on the disk. The files I had copied included a FACTORY.ZEX file, which had to be deleted from the unit, leaving only the SYSTEM.ZEX boot code. Success!
One of the demo songs included on the factory disk image. The hard drive that's in there (not the original) is pretty clacky. I might dig through my "vintage" computer inventory and see if I can find anything better.
I'm pondering recording a track using only this thing... Might be rough, without my normal arsenal of editing tools and pitch correction *shudder*
Anyway, perhaps this thread may help someone who runs across a MRS-1044 and needs to get it running. I can hook you up with firmware!
Anyway, perhaps this thread may help someone who runs across a MRS-1044 and needs to get it running. I can hook you up with firmware!
