Before we get to the Casio ROMPacks,
here are a few things I'd be happy if you could help me with:
Maybe you have the card or have downloaded a card image of Roland FANXRUP1 or FANXUP1
that was once floating around the web? If you have the card but don't
know how to create an exact backup of it, I'll help you with it - it's
easy. I've also kludged up an aternative upgrader v1→v2 package a very
long time ago, however it, while fully works, after starting up still
gets caught in some little trick that needs to be found out and fixed.
To fix it and make proper upgrader for everyone, I need someone that is
handy with SH3/7706 (HD6417706) disasembles and reverse engineering.
I've extracted and decompressed everything necessary and see the guilty
spot that needs to be patched, however I (at least currently) don't do
SH3.
Also, I'm looking for Yamaha PSR-2700 demo diskette contents that likely have been archived somewhere.
Maybe someone has a Yamaha PC-50, PCS-500 or PC-1000 service manual and/or schematics
for it? Since I've made way over two hundred Playcards available to you
(and also tested absolutely all my binaries as well!), working out the
hardware and firmware of these things is important to understand
playcard format and nuances, and luckily some of the playcard keyboard,
instead of a custom playcard sequence playback chip, use a stock Z80!
I'm looking for an Alesis WEDGE rom dump, Alesis XT:C rom dump and also Alesis XT-Reverb rom dump, Here's a MidiVerb dump for you in exchange. In fact, you can find tons of my dumped roms on this great webpage.
How come noone seems to have dumped Roland DDR-30 waverom?
I'm tempted to buy Bought one just to make dumps
(for all of you, btw!), but I already have a hundred more other synths
to desolder and dump in queue, so probably won't go for it. If you have
one - dump all the roms and let me know! It just should will be put on this great website. (already bought it and dumped program and all wave roms)
Any of the ART MultiVerb, ProVerb or similar reverbs/effect rom dumps are also of interest for me, for example I'm looking for ART Proverb 200 - here's an ART Multiverb LT dump for you in exchange.
Judging by the immense popularity of PSS-51 in eastern europe, asia and
amongst russians, it is quite hard to believe that no one have dumped
its roms. Maybe you have dumps of Yamaha PSS-51
program, abc and/or waveroms? Or maybe you know one for local pickup
somewhere within Baltic states? Well, just bought and dumped it, and extracted samples, demos and styles. Also I've previously made dumps of rather
similar PSS-795 and PSS-595.
It seems there that earliest version (A00) of the Yamaha FB01
firmware rom is somewhat rare, and I esimate, based on the units that I
have, that at most 10%-20% of the units in the wild do have it. All
usual ones have the most-likely-final C00, that I have desoldered,
dumped and shared in the long-ago ancient times. However, for the sake
of history and disassembly fun, having A00 dumped is a must as well,
though I don't realy have too much of spare time to desolder and dump
it, especially since maybe someone has already dumped this version
(given the popularity and abundance of these modules). So if you have
it, let me know. At some point I might desolder it and dump it, if it
turns out to be realy rare, but I'd better spend that time desoldering
and dumping something else.
Also, for the curious, initial hardware version (with A00 rom) only
differs with (besides missing ground wire from the pcb inside) that it
does not have a metal sub-chasis under the pcb, so you can tell that
from the outside by looking from the bottom: early ones have two holes,
but no screws in them, and instead has white plastic pegs in other
holes right besides front panel. Serial numbers for the A00 version
seem to be below 02000, while 07000 and up definitely has version C00.
No idea about if there was a B00 version in betwen 02000 and 07000.
(I will likely make a separate article on FB-01 at some point)
In regards to multieffect pedals - maybe you have a rom dump of Roland/BOSS GT-10B? There in this great webpage you can find my GT-3,5,6,8 dumps.
And maybe someone has already desoldered and dumped PSR-6000 waveroms?
Those are three pieces of DIP42 chips, each 2Mbyte (besides two more chips with styles and
then two DIP40 with program and demo songs). I am somewhat tempted to
grab one from the local trash market to do this, yet not sure if I
realy have to. And I don't have a clue when I could actually get to
desoldering it, even if I' ll grab one now. Still GEW9 stuff seems
rather interesting and not that common to come by in the keyboards.
Thanks, I now got the floppy files from Casio WK-1800 Accessory Disk (demo disk that came with it).
I will eventually make a page about this idea and what has been done
(if anything), but for now this text blob is just to keep the following
from the old post for those who are interested: You might like the main
reason I'm lookig for it - it is clearly a fun attack vector
to non-destructively dump its maskrom (in Hitachi H8) since it actually
allows to execute arbitrary code! While dumping can be done even by
blinking a led chdk-style, in this case there's already initialized and
working uart for that. Furthermore, if all is well, waveroms (8Mbyte total)
can also be dumped this way, since H8 can quickly access them, and
procedure to do this for studying will be in the maskrom. On the other
hand, I'll very likely at some point just desolder and dump waveroms
anyways - but it could be more epic to dump it via diskette and midi.
In regards to spare parts and hardware things that I'm missing, maybe you have this:
* Display from early 2000s - Kyocera KCG057QV1DB-G00 found in old Fantom-X keyboards (Roland part code: 03560889 "DISPLAY UNIT LCD KCG057QV1DB-G00").
If you do, please email me!
⚠️ This page is not yet done, just a quick kludge ⚠️
Just wanted to provide you with some goodies there before I do have time to finish at least base stuff on this page.
Some text here are vestigial remnants of yamaha playcard article.
THIS STUFF WILL BE OF MOST USE FOR YOU IF YOU ARE WORKING ON ROMPACK-MIDI CONVERTER OR PLAYER.
Throughout description of internal data format for ROM Packs is in US
patent 4624171 (or US4624171) called "Auto-Playing Apparatus" - here's full PDF
Very detailed song data format description can as well be found on this great webpage.
Also, if you have Casio PT-50 with TA-1 tape adapter installed, there's a couple hundred songs for it - as if you also had a thrid of a hundred rompacks! Only downside is that it takes over a minute to load one.
Most important stuff here currently is in downloads.
In case you are tinkering around with the song sequencer data format to
create a MIDI converter, player, editor or something - this is likely
to be of a definite value.
Casio RomPacks - including built-in demo ones
Dumped and extracted for you also SK-2, SK-5, SK-10 internal rompacks songs,
so that can now be normally loaded into other synths. All of these are
also availale as tape loading wavs for PT-50.
Casio ROM Pack Extractor & Compiler
Made also a compiler that makes fully valid any rompack
images with any of the songs, and, given the same songs in the same
order, compiles into bit-exact replicas of stock rompacks.
Songs (currently you can have over 260 pieces!)
extracted and can be used as separate entities. Currently there is no
player or MIDI converter for those, but someone will eventually make
one - and that's why I put this song archive here. It's not as trivial as it seems because all rhythm and
accompaniment sequences will have to also be recreated.
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By the way, I also dumped for you some Casio cartridges like these ones.
And hundreds of other dumps I did that are all around the web - like on this fantastic webpage.
Currently under construction. I am going to fill it up, whenever I will find some spare time for doing it.
Extracted Song Binaries ~ Sequencer Data
Yes, I did it and there's a lot now for you.
Song binaries contain corrected addresses/pointers so they are all
properly adjusted for treating each song data binary as a separate
piece. Compiler then adjusts all those when placing them in a rompack.
Song binaries start with track type marker, then address, then next marker and so on; and end with Track-R end event ($f0 00).
Throughout description of all of this turned out to be in US
patent 4624171 (or US4624171) named "Auto-Playing Apparatus" - here's a full PDF for you.
Very detailed song data format description can be found on this great webpage.
Patent contains some mistakes and illustration bit typos here and
there, but, when combined with Ra226's description and common sense, it
is all round great.
Conversion to MIDI is not trivial, since you need to recreate all
rhythms and accompaniment sequences as well. Also, there are many
oddities and quirks that need to be accounted for, for example that
chord changes are offset slightly before the spot where they need to
change, except when sounding held chords (constant chord sound instead
of accompaniment patterns) which willthen sound to early etc. Count-ins
that may or may not be 3 ticks shorter than a measure also depending on
that. And the proper section repeat event handling. And potentially
oddball behaviour of phrase counter. So there is a lot to dig to get it
all play, convert or edit properly.
Song binaries do not contain rompack header or footer, so relevant
reading starts from "Table: RO-551 Track Index Analysis" which is what
my song binaries start with. Addresses in these ones point to proper
track data counting nibbles relatively to song binary start.
By the way, all are checked to be correct, all have been compiled into
tape loading wavs for PT-50 and many have been listened, and many have
been recompiled into new rompacks. So these song binaries can be
trusted to be good.
Few songs from different rompacks after extraction do perfectly match,
and there are few that have some alterations done by casio (mostly
instrument changes when they adapted rompack songs for SK keyboards).
Also, while SK-2 and SK-10 officially have 4 demo songs, you'll find
that actually there are 21. All of the inaccessible (5 and above) are
the same for both keyboards and contain little jingles, fanfares and
snippets for the "sampling repeat" mode. And, of course, all do play
and work fine on other keyboards.
In the SK-5 I found a hardware rompack on a separate board and dumped
it as well - it is completely valid rompack, but contains some dummy
empty songs in between the normal ones. Dummies are interesting
themselves as an official canonical proper empty song data from
original song data vendor and their tools. Otherwise I did recompile it
into a rompack without those dummies, and also made one compilation of
all songs from SK-2, SK-5 and SK-10 in one rompack.
Anyways, this is a treasure trove archive to develop your player, editor, converter on.
Converted Song Binaries for Tape Loading into PT-50 (but not PT-30)
Also reverse engineered stuff related to PT-50 (and other such like PT-30) tape loading and made tools to demodulate→extract→alter→compile→modulate. This now allows to create PT-50 tape loadable goodies from any rompacks.
You need PT-50 with TA-1 tape interface installed.
I have made and put here for you archive with ready WAV files you can load into PT-50 with all of the extracted ROMPack songs (hundreds! 😎).
Unfortunately PT-30 has twice smaller sequencer memory than PT-50 so it even theoretically cannot fit any of the over-1kbyte RomPack songs (about 58% of all known songs are over 1kbyte). However, unfortunately sequencer data format in it is totally different (even differnt byte length of note events, etc) and probably is why it is missing RomPack slot. I was looking into possibility to make all smaller rompack songs available also for PT-30 as well, however this is not possible without fully reprocessing all track event code.
As I don't have Casio KX-101 nor any recordings of its tape saves, I can't currently say if it is possible to make a perfectly transferred rompack song library for it just like I did for PT-50. It seems to be possible, but I'll need to have some tape dumps to see what is there. Or maybe, if you have one (and even less likely - with working tape mechanism), you could just try loading any of my PT-50 tape loads to see if that works (unlikely).
Bad thinig is that despite much later firmware, it still has old set of non-rompack rhythms from PT-30, so its sequencer may also likely be from it - and thus completely incompatible. I suspect that if very lucky, some conversions could eventually be made, but chances are slim.
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Tremendous
Tools for RomPacks
Since I figured out the
That's it for now!