Enhanced M-512e clone card with switchable multiple banks on a single card

Started by Headless68, January 21, 2015, 05:33:56 AM

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Headless68

Thought this one looks interesting - its in late stages of prototype now. Expected to be about 50 euros - ish.
you can hold multiple banks and there is no battery required.

http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=76886




Headless68

.......Since you guys 'made' me buy a VG-8ex - .....another one I'm going to have to explain to 'she who thumps hardest' :-)

Elantric

Most folks just use the free VLibrary VG-8 Patch librarian ( Windows app) and swap out your VG-8 user patch area with the currently desired ones

Get VLibrary for VG-8 , and more VG-8 patches here:
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?action=downloads;cat=22

Headless68

trying to avoid windows - have access to that on my works laptop however caused a security alert with what I considered to be only safe downloads (Gumtowns GR-55 editor, Roland GR-55 drivers & librarian, Cakewalk Sonar X3, Line6 rig kontrol3 drivers) - something was constantly trying to contact an IP address in Romania - laptop wiped. (I suspect it was Sonar as that was the last thing I installed, direct download from the cakewalk website though).
dont really want to create a windows partition just for the VG8 librarian on the mac so I thought I would dump all the patches I want onto a card then I wont need windows :-)


Headless68

Quick update - I have been asked to Beta test the card on VG8 - its looking good so far on other Roland devices
Will keep you all in the loop with progress & availability

Cheers
Phil  (Headless)


Headless68

.....also - the card will be configured as 8x 512 so the same as 8 individual original cards - this should hold 512 patches total
The card does not use battery to maintain the data so should be very reliable


bassman4d521


dojoe

Quote from: bassman4d521 on August 25, 2015, 01:35:27 PM
I Need This!!!!

Hey, I'm desperately trying to reach you. You should have received the beta card I sent you and I'm eager to know whether or not it works for you ;) I sent you a PM, please respond there even if you already sent an email, to make sure it's not just my email server eating your reply.

Thanks!

Headless68

Hi there - the guy who is running the project had a VG8 user in Germany which is closer to him than me in the UK so thats where its gone - not had any further update from them so far.
They had some logistical issues with card sizing as not all the roland products had the exact same input slot but the final version will work with all.

If you check with the link at the beginning of this thread you should see the latest in the vintage synth forum on this
http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=76886
Headless

dojoe

Quote from: Headless68 on January 11, 2016, 11:22:19 AM
the guy who is running the project had a VG8 user in Germany which is closer to him than me in the UK so thats where its gone
Correction: I didn't send you the card because of a communication mishap (again sorry about that), and it instead went to bassman4d521 in the US, whom I am desperately trying to reach two posts above.

Quote from: Headless68 on January 11, 2016, 11:22:19 AM
not had any further update from them so far
That, unfortunately, is correct.  :(

dojoe

Quote from: dojoe on January 10, 2016, 07:01:35 AM
Hey, I'm desperately trying to reach you.

bassman4d521 responded to my email, so all is well =) The card seems to have passed first smoke tests and fits into the VG-8 slot quite well. Full real-band-usage test pending as he's pretty much under water right now, but this looks promising.

Tony Raven

It's very overkill for my actual needs... but I look forward to owning one. ;D

(Anyone know if it functions with other era gear like GR-30 or D-20?)

The coolest part (IMO) is that there's actual demand for accessories for a slightly obscure $2,000 device that hasn't been manufactured since 1999.

dojoe

Quote from: Tony Raven on February 07, 2016, 11:25:17 AM
(Anyone know if it functions with other era gear like GR-30 or D-20?)
The GR-30 doesn't appear to have a memory card slot, so nope. The D-20 should accept it no problem.

Tony Raven

Quote from: dojoe on February 07, 2016, 11:34:43 AM
The GR-30 doesn't appear to have a memory card slot
You are, of course, correct. :-[ I'm almost certain I meant to ask about either the GR-1 or GR-50... ::)

Moonpool

This sounds great.  I still use  my VG-8 EX in conjunction with a VG99 and have a variety of older cards with patches on and I can't keep them all on the machine, so having a card I could fill with 5 banks of patches would be awesome.I can't wait until this is available!

Elantric

I had hoped DoJoe would have completed his Enhanced M-512e clone card with switchable multiple banks on a single card for VG-8/ VG-8EX owners


Looks like they are still undergoing tests:
http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=76886&sid=4f7679942c80edcee68ebc42f2b152b3&start=255
May 15, 2016
QuoteThanks for testing and also thanks for the photos! Happy the card arrived safely and works well for you  :)

In other news, I met with baz99 today to figure out and measure the problems the JV series are having with the RevC cards. We had a nice play around with scopes, wires and his JV1080 and eventually came up with a set of filter component values that work with the JVs. Now it's up to Zaichornok to test these same filter values in his GC-8 controller and if the modded card works in there as well, I can call this problem fixed. Fingers crossed.
dojoe

Location: Germany

dojoe

Quote from: Elantric on May 18, 2016, 10:31:49 PM
I had hoped DoJoe would have completed his Enhanced M-512e clone card with switchable multiple banks on a single card for VG-8/ VG-8EX owners

I would have hoped the same ;) But the problems that are ailing the JV synths appear to also be present on VG-8s, according to a tester. The previous card revisions worked fine and dandy with all of them, so I'm optimistic that all will be well once I have the right filter values that work on both the JVs and the GC-8 (which was the reason for adding the filters in the first place).

So it's all taking time, but it's time well spent. I'll keep you posted.

Headless68

Revision C beta Card in the post on the way
I will report back once tested

Headless68

.....it's in my hand now !
I'm gigging today - hopefully get chance to initially test tomorrow



Headless68

ok - where we are at with this so far - the card form factor is perfect and fits the VG8 with no issue and the switching for the banks is easily accessible.
The VG8 detects the card ok - the write protect switch works. Thats the end of the good news so far.
When you attempt to save data (patch or system) the VG8 tries to format the current card bank selected & the message 'Card not an M-512e' is displayed & nothing is saved.
To further amend the cards filter config we would need a VG8 in Stuttgart Germany where Dojoe has the diagnostic tools.
putting out the feelers now for someone local who may be able to assist.



sonical

In case it may help to debug the card, in 90-ties I built a card reader/writer also for U-220 and all reated roland cards with a slot, that I can still use, and have also saved images of formatted sram cards off most synths I have.

I can send you formatted sram dump images of various/all different JVs, Ds, JDs and VG-8 non-EX, if it could help.

VG-8 (non S-1/EX) should be the most simple one to get to work,  since it has surprisingly low customisability/parameters and therefore it uses only ~10kbytes of whatever sram card is plugged in. (in contrast, even GX-700 sysex is almost 4x bigger due to much more parameters to edit; and more so GT-5,3 up to 10 have about five to 36 times as much patch data as VG-8)

The JV-2080 uses entire 64kbytes of M-512 card, and, to fit all the data, it even uses packing (all 7bit data get suffed into full bytes to avoid unused bits). Lower JVs (1000 and below), Ds and JDs all use below 32kbytes - and when formatting, doesn't touch the upper part (usually because A15 is hard tied to 0).

Surprisingly for it's time VG-8 uses exactly the same card gate array as is in D-50, so there shouldn't be any accessing differences.
However there are a few edits around card interface, probably for S-1 (I'll later write about it on a separate post about it).

Pre-writing contents of a properly formatted card image into MRAM card could be helpful to see wether the unit works fine when just reading the contents.

Additionally, I can also capture whatever is going on on the slot at the moment when the MRAM card gets rejected and the same moment when normal SRAM formatting passes fine. It is strange that some simple check fails there - probably it checks mirroring within card space by writing test string and reading it elsewhere. But for this I'd need to have the card for testing. JV-2080 has a simple way to check mirroring (to see if card is M-256 or M-512) as it writes the same 16byte header in both halves of the card, but with a single byte offset (rolling 16-th byte back into 0 position).