Bernina's "sort of" take regular needles. The story I was told, they didn't want to use the 705H (because H was too much like Husquvarna to them) so they have the 705B, and the scarf(?) is different.
I believe newer ones take the 705H, so now it's getting hard to find the 705B. I know we looked and looked and Dh finally did something to the machine so it would work using 705H needles. We had stopped at a couple of Bernina dealers, and were basically told "get rid of the old junk and get a new one" which of course, we had no intention of doing.
DH also says that the 830 Record we had, had a bigger arm (more like my 990) than the 530 we now have.
We need to get someone to measure an Elan Grasshopper for you, that is a smaller machine so it may be more like the 222, except it's going to cost a LOT less. And that should take regular 705H needles.