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About me. (ROM dumps, pinouts, making a Casio keyboard emulator?)


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Hello, I am collector of music keyboards and electronic sound toys and partly modify them into synthesizers.

 

This is my keyboard site: http://weltenschule.de/TableHooters/index.html

I bought an eprommer ("Willem PRO4 isp",had unfortunately defective transistors and other flaws I had to fix) and have started to dump EPROMs and ROMs of my keyboard collection.

- Has anybody tried yet to make an emulator (similar like MAME) for old Casio keyboards?

E.g. Casiotone 401 and MT-40 are controlled by an Intel MCS-48 microcontroller which ROM I successfully dumped. So at least the accompaniment section would be possible to emulate yet. Robin Whittle (firstpr.com) found out much about the Consonant-Vowel synthesis main voice sound ICs in early Casios, which would be useful to emulate them. Also the various Casio calculator emulators on the internet might be useful to understand what kinds of special CPUs Casio has used. Google patent search helped much to get an idea what is going on inside of them. Unfortunately most early main ICs seem to be rather based on general digital logics (networks of gates, counters and flipflops - like a Pong game) than a CPU (software controlled by one central code ROM) in its stricter sense.

I am still working on documenting the pinouts and functions (e.g. key matrix eastereggs) of all 1980th Casio home keyboard special ICs. For this I already have examined all service manuals I could find on free websites. Unfortunately there aren't many about first generation Casios. (If you need info, e-mail me.)

I also own a dead SK-200 (from eBay,someone elses circuit-bending-corpse); after disabling the auto-power-off (to make it turn on),only all lights flicker wildly and there is some bus activity (seen on CRT oscilloscope), but it makes no sound at all. Does anybody know the symptom? Is the sound CPU dead?

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Well I be dammed so Casio used also Intel chips to power their devices and Korg did this already for many years. 

As I also own a Korg MW1 it blew me away how their engineers build their Oasys based on this program.

http://musickit.sourceforge.net/  How complex things seem so simple but what still is not. 

And a few day's ago I learning everything about the XW synths development history and their background. 

I think its very nifty and amazing stuff the kind that makes me hungry to know more.

 

http://patents.justia.com/inventor/hiroshi-iwase

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_MCS-48

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Hello CyberYogi, maybe you can help me develop a virtual Casio-check out this website:

 

www.ctrlr.org

 

Can design just about anything you want virtually. I've been trying to develop some control software for my PX-350 which has no editor or control software-but this might work for developing your emulator-I don't have very good sysex "chops" and probably can't help you much but I'll try. Do you know "Marco", the keyboard player? He uses alot of circuit bent stuff and tours and performs regularly using little Casios, a "Speak and Spell" and other old stuff, does very well live. He's on Youtube-i can get you his website or email if you're interested-probably has alot of other stuff i don't even know about. Thanks for posting.

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I loved my Korg Poly-61, one of the most advanced keyboards of its time. had one of the first arpeggiators and was very easy to program. Now I know why-thanks XW-Addict for these links. Unbelievable how many patents the Japanese came up with, but then they've been making music instruments for a loooong time and this gives me an even greater appreciation ofr how deep an instrument is the XW.

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Hi Yogi! The only emulator I have played with is the VL-1 VSTi.. it is a bona fide VA synth not a romple so they got into some deep programming. It's fun!  :) 

http://www.polyvalens.com/blog/vl-1/

 

 

There are also at least a couple of CZ emulators, and also one for the HT range. I think Casio would do very well to have a keyboard 'emulating' their older synths/ classic boards. I would still love to see a CZ emulator with real time controls, and even better a real time filter function (the hardware CZ's only offered some waveforms that mimicked filter sweeping/ resonance, though with no real time control).

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I loved my Korg Poly-61, one of the most advanced keyboards of its time. had one of the first arpeggiators and was very easy to program. 

 

The Jupiter 4 pre-dates the Poly 61 by quite a few years (1978 I think), and that had a built in arpeggiator that was famously used by Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran on their first two albums!

 

I'm pretty sure some other synths also had built in arpeggiators pre 1980.

 

Casio's CT1000P of 1982 had a built in arpeggiator, and that was also programmable.

 

I love arpeggiators, and it was a real shame when they fell out of fashion in the mid 1980's. The CZ's and VZ's would have had a real extra punch if they had onboard arpeggiators.  B)

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Hello CyberYogi, maybe you can help me develop a virtual Casio-check out this website:

 

www.ctrlr.org

 

Can design just about anything you want virtually. I've been trying to develop some control software for my PX-350 which has no editor or control software-but this might work for developing your emulator-I don't have very good sysex "chops" and probably can't help you much but I'll try.

 

Say is this program also usable for the XW it looks as an interresting midi tool to construct a template for.. 

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My Casio hardware research is in a very early stage. I have downloaded all the early PDFs of keyboard/synth patents and try to understand them. Casio tried to imitate all kinds of acoustic instruments with strings, percussion or wind (e.g. the PT-7 was originally designed to become an electronic mouth organ). Strange is that they released tons of new instruments patents every year until 1996(?), but then it suddenly stopped and only few and in no way revolutionary patents followed from that day on.

I am still employing a PC made from finest DOS hardware made in 1995 to 2002 (running Win98SE/KernelEx with 2 ISA sound cards). So no modern music software nor Windoze programming environment has any chance to run on it. May be that soon I install a 2nd small mainboard for modern Windoze inside the Colani bigtower since web browsers become incompatible with websites and the last remaining antivirus' update and boot duration takes now >20 minutes. The last time I coded something serious is about 10 years ago.
 

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From what I know Casio had to stop thanks to the other well establish brands not because off competitive reason more because of nagging the other brands had on patent

issue's at certain synthesize features from all I can remember.

 

AFAIK it was mainly FM stuff where Casio had patent trouble with Yamaha. But with many other things (like the single-chip softsynth inside SA-series) Casio indeed came first. And they invented a strange concept of using n-stage shift registers (n = count of polyphony channels) instead of flipflops in digital sound generators and an "adder" before the output DAC to implement polyphony by hardware multitasking (switching with main clock speed!) without space eating memory busses inside the chip. In 1st generation instruments they made some really unusual chip designs to permit fully digital synthesis with perhaps 1000 transistors. (Modern PC CPUs have up to 2.5 billions.)

http://www.google.se/patents/US4348932

Check the waveform drawings in US patent 4348932 to see what I mean - It did crazy stuff to simulate envelopes without space eating multiplication hardware. And Casio stored and summed increments instead of complete waveforms to avoid 1970th Allen Organ patents.

Much later in 1990th home keyboards Casio still used FM-based technologies, thus Yamaha patent trouble certainly was not an issue to abandon pro synths (they simply paid royalties).

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Much later in 1990th home keyboards Casio still used FM-based technologies, thus Yamaha patent trouble certainly was not an issue to abandon pro synths (they simply paid royalties).

 

 

I believe it was a combination of issues that made Casio leave the pro synth market. The infamous Yamaha patent lawsuit was the main issue, though I'm sure I read that even Yamaha's 'FM' wasn't true FM, but rather 'PM' (Phase Modulation), which is a variation of Casio's PD (Phase Distortion). Furthermore, Casio's iPD on the VZ-1 was closer to true FM than the Yamaha DX series were. However, the VZ-1 didn't sell particularly well. Despite being more powerful than the CZ's, it was more complicated to program to the point many people didn't bother. The factory presets were also somewhat bland and didn't show off the potential of what the VZ was really capable of.

 

What with the CZ's reaching the end of their shelf life (and the Yamaha lawsuit), the FZ's,  though successful were not developed further and the VZ-1 not selling well, I think Casio just baled out. Added to the snobbery from the pro market to anything with 'Casio' written on it, Casio decided to focus on their lucrative and more successful home/ amateur market products, something they've always had a great success with.

 

Every now and then Casio come out with a great new model and try the waters again, but despite producing great boards the market still doesn't take to them like they do with Rolands/ Korgs/ Yamahas etc. The MZ2000 is a good example of this, and to some extent the XW's, certainly here in the UK, is another.

 

I am certainly glad that Casio DO still produce such great 'pro' boards, as those of us that who can see their potential are more than grateful to add such excellent instruments to our musical arsenals.

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