This is an old revision of the document!
Hi!
I decided to open up this small support site for the Roland MV30 because I found that it was very difficult to find resources regarding this old piece of hardware. The Roland MV-30 is a semi-portable music production system and has built-in midi sequencing capabilities (one of the earliest ones to include MIDI). This unit came with a built-in sound bank which includes some of the most famous sounds from Roland's 80's era synthesizers, and some percussion sounds, including some from the well known and respected TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines. For expandability, it has a 720 K floppy disk drive. It also has two SN-U110 ROM card slots which can be used to expand the available sounds of the system.
This support page is work in progress, and any corrections and updates are welcome.
When the Roland MV30 first came out, it sold for around $2000. Nowadays units can be found for less than $100. The reason for this is because they they're usually found non-functioning. They also require a system diskette to boot up, and they can be hard to come by, so most non-functioning units are actually just working units with misplaced boot disks.
File | Size | Description |
---|---|---|
roland_mv-30_owners_manual.pdf | 11.6 MB | Roland MV-30 Owner's Manual |
I've hosted the boot images of this system on this site so you can download and copy them yourself to a blank double density (DD-720K) disk. You will need a floppy disk drive which supports 720K floppy disks, and a program to write floppy images onto a floppy disk, for example WinImage or HFV Explorer. You may have to run the programs as Administrator.
File | Size | Description |
---|---|---|
mv30_os_v1_0_official.zip | 270 KB | Roland MV-30 System Disk with Sample Data v1.0 [SYS-MV30-6] |
mv30_os_1_0_front.jpg | 3 MB | Roland MV-30 System Disk with Sample Data v1.0 scanned image, front |
mv30_os_1_0_back.jpg | 4 MB | Roland MV-30 System Disk with Sample Data v1.0 scanned image, back |
mv30_os_1_0_front_photo.jpg | 446 KB | Roland MV-30 System Disk with Sample Data v1.0 photograph, front |
File | Size | Description |
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mv30_os_v1_08.zip | 270 KB | Roland MV-30 System Disk v1.08 |
File | Size | Description |
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mv30_os_v1_091.zip | 270 KB | Roland MV-30 System Disk v1_09.1 |
mv30_os_v1_091_front_photo.jpg | 289 KB | Roland MV-30 System Disk v1.09.1 photograph, front |