A list of projects that I plan on designing someday…
- Sequential Prophet 2000: memory expansion
- Sequential Prophet 3000: memory expansion, PLCC to PGA adapter for 2nd rev ASIC
- Casio FZ-10m: upgrade to FZ-20m
- Korg DSM-1: SCSI, USB, and Memory expansion
- Oberheim OberMoog (first generation OB-Mx): Finish OS and produce more units
- Keytek CTS-2000: rewrite and expand OS
- Universal Digital Out board: adaptable to any digital synth or effect unit
- Probably more, but this list is already several decades worth of work!
I hope the sequential memory upgrades will happen soon-ish
good luck with your new site!
Pete
Thanks Peter. The P2000 upgrade should be fairly simple. P3000 will need the Rev B adapter done first before the memory expansion.
The SCI Prophet600 is always there waiting to be overhauled… 🙂
So many synths, so little time!! Maybe one day…
Scsi cf card readers ,
asr-x and other samplers we need card readers ,
some food for thought
Doesn’t the ASR-X have a SCSI port? If so you could use pretty much any SCSI card reader like the IBM PCD series – It would have to be tested first of course.
One thing that is very hard to find for the ASR-X is the eight channel analog output expander. Does that seem like a feasible thing to reverse engineer?
If you have too much time the e-mu emulator Eii memory expansion might be a great project with a large community and interest -;) even with the lotharek Fd emulator and the emuser there is a limit of 1 mb in the internal memory (with the + version). Adding an USB port and this would be a major achievement !
Just trying to tease you !
All the best,
Isham
Having too much time hasn’t been a problem yet! But one never knows. I wonder if the 1MB is a hardware limitation imposed by E-mu, however I know almost nothing about the circuitry of this machine. If you know anyone that has schematics I’ll take a look at it.
Ehe I can imagine time is rare with all these nice toys around -;)
the E-II is something special, yes it has a legendary status due to some famous users (DM and so many others..) but it has something else linked to its sound sonic capabilities I guess (listen to jmpsynth user on YouTube )… Difficult to describe, maybe organic is the right word
Schematics are here: http://www.dblondin.com/schematics/Emulator_II_Service_Manual.pdf
If you are wishing to feel the community temperature or just read some posts :
http://eiiiforum.com/index.php there are some tech geek there (which I’m not , music is enough challenging and a pleasure hopefully !)
Isham
Cheers,
Hi there,
I am interested in your Prophet 2000 memory upgrades as well. In fact, any upgrades to the following samplers would be amazing: Emax I, Emax II, Emulator II, Ensoniq Mirage, Akai S950, EOS samplers, etc…
Keep up the amazing work!
-Scott
How about a similar upgrade (as per the Kord DSS-1) for the Roland S-50?
Pleeeeeease! 😉
Mike.
I agree – the S-50 would really benefit from these changes.
The difficult part may be the effort required to re-jig the OS software to take advantage of the hardware upgrades.
Mike.
Looking forward to the prophet 2000 memory upgrade!
I second the Ensoniq Mirage as a great project with a very active community on the yahoo groups, also emu emax 1&2 , emu sp1200.
the sp1200 and mirage could possibly see the most interest as those 2 machines are with very limited on board ram,
Expansions for the SP-1200 would receive overwhelming appreciation, such as increased sample time and the ability to read/write WAV/AIFF.
The thing can only sample 2.5 seconds per patch!
Kawai K-5000 Memory upgrades are impossible to find! Any ideas?
Haven’t any requests for them. I’ve never seen one so I can’t say if it would be possible to reverse engineer it
Actually this has been done recently.
Here:
http://www.marjorie.de/kawai/kawai40.htm
No idea if they´re still available for sale though.
How hard would it be to circuit-bend the DSS-1 by adding knobs to control the analog filter?
There’s people who have done that – message Jammie Logan on the DSS-1 user’s group – he’s done it with a DSM-1.
Any news on the Prophet 3000 memory upgrade?
Nothing yet – I’ve been putting it off until I move to a new house, but I should be getting back on track with that soon.
Hej
I stumbled across your site through a matrixsynth post of a prophet 3000 auction.
I own a Prophet 2002+, and when I saw that memory expansion for it is one of your future projects, I thought I should point you in this direction: http://synth.curlsystems.de/
If you not already found this guy, he made an excellent editor for the prophet. As far as I know he is currently working on rewriting the OS to make the Prophet completely controllable via MIDI CCs.
Maybe you guys could work together and profit from eachother.
greetings from Vienna
CASIO FZ10M TO FZ20M UPGRADE…… NICE, PLEASE MAKE IT HAPPEN. CHEERS…..
I would love to see this: Keytek CTS-2000: rewrite and expand OS
Now I know who owns the other one. 🙂
I have two Casio FZ-1’s and would love to be able to mod them for SCSI.
Wow! Someone else who owns a CTS-2000. I’d be curious to know what upgrades/improvements you imagine are possible with this instrument. I picked mine up a couple years ago out of curiosity, hoping it would respond to parameter changes via sys ex, no dice. For the money, it hasn’t disappointed, but it leaves me with the feeling that there is substantial potential trapped inside.
Cheers from Kentucky!
Andy
Hi Andy! I did a bit of research into the CTS-2000. It uses an obscure CPU that is not supported by my decompiler so it would be more work to make changes to the OS. I may look into it once I’ve cleared the DSS and DSM off my schedule. I think there are hardware mods that could be done to make it sound better, as well.
Hey Tom, you need to look at the Roland S-50 next! 🙂
Cheers,
Mike.
Hey Tom, I know I know a Million people keep asking for the DSS-1 Upgrade. Well make that a Million & ! : ) I’ve had mine since the 80’s never really used it much, however tried to fine every reason in the world to sell it, until i came from NAMM and the Rep for Korg told me I SHOULD KEEP IT!! Well U are the Go To person & I want to keep this Board. as i also have the Korg Kronos X88 & The Yamaha Motif 88 50 Anniversary Addition.. Please make this upgrade available in 2017 have a Happy New Year!! I also have the 31 disk it came with but when i load the disk the unit will not read it.. Any info on recovery for those disk?/Users/gregorymuhammad/Desktop/IMG_0571.JPG