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.
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.
This support page is work in progress, and any corrections and updates are welcome.
File | Size | Description |
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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 |
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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 |