more mv 8800 questions

Thats just an issue with materials in Europe. I worked for a company that sends machines to Europe. We had to make sure our metals didn't contain lead. We ended up getting stuck with several sheets of 16 gage metal. They did end up getting used in products which stayed in the US.
It wouldn't be nothing for Roland to swap out materials.

Yeh, but did it involve solder?

I design electronics in Europe. Roland would have had to change over to lead-free solder and change almost every component to types compatible with lead-free solder. And where componenets were obsolete or not available lead-free they would have to re-design.

To the user, the MV8800 is just an MV8000 with colour LCD. To the software engineers - no change. But as far as hardware engineering goes, there would have been a lot of work for very little gain, just to keep being able to sell it in the EU.

...And if someone asks me about technology I designed in 1992 that I put in a product in 2002 I won't say: 'It's the same.' I'll say: 'I may have borrowed a little of it...'

It was the solder and PCBs which is why the 8000's main board was x'd entirely . They also saved some cash by loosing the floppy and switching to readily available 2.5 HD. Now figure in that Roland only makes two versions of the MV. The Japan Only (voltage) and the mass market unit with built in voltage converter. This saves millions over making regionalized units and they can reallocate a global inventory on the fly.

The European market is massive and no global company can ignore it's significance and profitability. In that sense more than worth it to meet ROHS compliance. Unlike the 8000, the the internal components are all ROHS compliant and marrked as such. This why for years the VGA card wasn't available in EU markets.

Add to that, It also gives you an opportunity to reintroduce the product with some bells and whistles. The vga card, color screen, and OS update with no price increase is pretty damn good IMO. On the used market the steal is most def the 8000.

The OS in the 8800 does have some significant upgrades that make life a bit easier. Bulk wav saves and realtime pattern track recording come to mind right away.

Makes sense