Last Updated 12/4/2006
Upgrade Count to date: about 9 BR-8s that I know of have been upgraded (myself, Bob, Doug, Paul, Frank, Steve, Jim, another Steve, and Chuck)
Throw out your Zip disks! Here’s a way to drag your trusty BR-8 into the 21st century. Upgrade it with a drive that will accept flash memory cards! The pictured BR-8 has been updated with a drive that recognizes CompactFlash cards, SecureDigital cards AND Sony MemorySticks!
I have tested the BR-8 with a 256MB SD card, and it works like a dream. It takes about 12 seconds to initialize the card, and you end up with 2h07m36s recording time. A 512MB SD card got me 4h17m10s, and it initialized in about 10 seconds.
Another BR-8 upgrader has confirmed that a 1G SD card works. For some reason, it initializes with only 4h28m32s – Based on the 512 time of 4h17m, I would have expected more like 8 hours from the 1G. I think we must be running up against the storage limit that the BR-8 can possibly conceive having. I recently got a 1G card myself and I got the same time total, so it is no fluke. The card initialized in about 11 seconds and cost me $25 – go to www.PriceWatch.com if you want to find who is selling them cheap today.
At this point, I’ve gotten several confirmations from other upgraders that 4h28m is the limit for the BR-8. So buy 2 512s instead of a single 1G card. Big thanks to Chuck for being the first to confirm that a 1G card works (and the first to upgrade and tell me).
Advantages:
1) More recording time – A 256MB SD or CF card beats the pants off a 100MB Zip disk. Want more time? Try a 512MB card. Or a 1 gig card. They are getting cheaper every day
2) Better media – When was the last time you used a Zip disk for anything other than your BR-8? But you probably have a CompactFlash card in your digital camera. You may have an SD card in your phone. Or a MemoryStick in your MP3 player.
3) Easy to transfer to a PC – They make USB drives that interface with all these cards. Again, you may already have one.
4) Noiseless recording – No more worrying about hearing the whine of the Zip drive in the background. Your BR-8 should record sound, not produce it!
5) Impress women and look like a pro with hacked equipment. If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.
6) Field recording battery life – I got an e-mail from someone who was replacing their Zip drive in the hopes that the SD reader would use less power and hence survive longer on a battery charge. Alan Lomax is spinning in his grave.
FAQ:
(OK, no one had actually even read this when I wrote it, but these are the questions that I would have if I were you…)
Q: Where can I get this drive?
A: http://www.amtron.com/reader/iisdmc.htm
or www.picco.nl/product_info.php
Q: How much is the drive?
A: When I bought mine, they were $51 each. You can buy 2 and then you’ll have a spare for your PC (and one to use in case the one on your BR-8 ever breaks). You can buy 100 of them for all I care. Go nutty.
Q: What about the Addonics IDE flash drive that I saw on Amazon.com? It is nice and black and matches the BR-8. Won’t that work as well?
A: Looks good, but the BR-8 doesn’t recognize it. The drive pictured here is the only brand that I have found that works. Then again, I only tried 2 brands. If you want to try some other brands, go on and rock out. Let me know how it goes.
Q: What do I have to do to upgrade my system?
A: Take the old Zip drive out and stick the new flash drive in. That’s it. No solder, no firmware hack, no crazy re-wiring. You can even put the old Zip drive back in 10 minutes later if you don’t like the way it works. But you won’t because you will.
There are other sites that tell you how to upgrade the Zip drive in the BR-8 to a larger drive. Follow those instructions. I’ll maybe post some better instructions some day. Maybe not.
I did NOT upgrade my firmware when I upgraded my BR-8. I don’t know if this upgrade works with all firmware versions. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I DID set the jumper so that the drive acts as Master and Slave. After I set it up this way, I was able to use both CompactFlash (lower slot) and SD (upper slot). I have the jumper over the 2 pins that are closest to the IDE data cable.
Q: How can I show you my appreciation for my new upgrade?
A: Send me an e-mail (edhubbell@gmail.com) and let me know how it works out for you. I’m keeping a count of all the upgrades and I’ll update the site to show what works/doesn’t work. If you have an illustration/picture/anecdote that you think will help other users with their upgrade, send it along and maybe I’ll put it on the site. As of 12/4/06, no one has reported anything like ‘I upgraded but I don’t like it’. If you think you’d like this upgrade, you will love this upgrade.
Q: What is in it for you? Are you making any money on this deal?
A: None. I had briefly considered re-selling the
drives from this site, but I wasn’t sure how many people would actually upgrade
their BR-8s. So donate the $5 to $10 I
would have made off you to some charity.
Or put me on the list to see your band if they come through the Durham/Chapel
Hill/Raleigh area. At the current
upgrade rate, I’m pretty sure I could have lost at least $500 by now. And I probably would have had to learn how to
ship 2 units to the
Q: What is SpectraGrow anyway?
A: It is my ‘company’ – We sell LED grow lights for plants and whatnot. I don’t make any money doing that either. I probably need to work a little harder on that, so hopefully the added web traffic to my SpectraGrow site will nudge me forward a bit. Although it looks like it hasn’t.
Questions I Want Answers To:
Does anyone notice a difference in the audio functionality of the BR-8 before and after the upgrade? No one has as of 12/4/06.
Does anyone notice a difference in formatting times between fast cards/slow cards or big/small cards or SD/CF/MS format cards?
That’s it - Check out the BR-8 group on Yahoo at http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/BR-8/ for more discussions on the BR-8. But then again, that’s probably how you found your way here.