Custom-built multi-bank Roland M-256/M-512 memory cards

[ʝɵʝɵ]

Curious, are these cards also capable of being used to replace PCM cards? Or only the data cards? Forgive me if this is a stupid question or has been answered already.

Electrically, this is possible (there is an option to expose one 4M card rather than 16 256K or 8 512K cards). In practice however, there is no way simple way to put existing ROM data on the memory card (which you would first have to extract from another ROM card), and creating new ROM cards would require to reverse-engineer their binary format of that specific synthesizer.

Edit: More information about this can also be found on the last page of the card's manual, which is freely avaliable from the website.

[dojoe]

Curious, are these cards also capable of being used to replace PCM cards? Or only the data cards? Forgive me if this is a stupid question or has been answered already.

Not stupid at all It's been asked before but it's hidden deep inside the bowels of this thread

The cards can be used for PCM data and should be compatible with PCM cards up to 4MBit. For sizes outside the 256KBit and 512KBit formats we support they need to be reconfigured, but that's documented in the manual. There are also PCM cards larger than 4MBit out there - our card will not work in slots made for these as they use a different connector.

The main problem is that there is no generic reader/writer for this type of memory card so it'll be hard to get the PCM data on there. People have successfully built such reader/writers of course but I'm not aware of any commercially available ones. The test jig I'm using to test every card we sell can certainly do this, but it's quite the opposite of "ready for market"

The most ingenuous trick I've seen so far was one person turned an original card slot and a DIP pin header into an adapter for an EPROM programmer - that's probably as simple as it gets if you have the programmer handy

Hope that helps!

[linzo]

Dear Sirs, For roland JV-1000 wich card i need? Roland M-256 ? Are they available for purchase?
Thank You

[ʝɵʝɵ]

Yes, cards are still available for purchase via https://sagamusix.de/other/roland_memory_cards/

http://www.rolandmuseum.de/synth/html/J ... V1000.html suggests that a M-256 card should be fine, but you can double-check the owner's manual. It should list all compatible accessories.

[Playkeyboardnow]

The German firm Musitronics ( www.musitronics.de) did make a commercial PCM card writer for the U110/U220 type card, you could write 1, 2 or 4mb cards, for use with an Atari ST system. The system should be able to make cards for the D70 and R8 also, but there is not much info to find about this these days. They don't sell the card writers anymore but they have the techonlogical knowledge for sure...

[ʝɵʝɵ]

Interesting. They are still in business, so maybe anyone who's interested in the device could just send them a mail and ask nicely?

[linzo]

this guys made pcm refill for korg m1
https://shop.waverex.de/waverex-the-wav ... nsion.html

it would be amazing for roland

[ʝɵʝɵ]

As mentioned before in this topic - it's simply not possible to offer a single product that would work with all Roland synths that can use ROM cards, just like that card doesn't work with any Korg synth. You need to reverse-engineer the card format for every single Roland synth. Once you have done that, you can actually use the card we offer here to store the new ROM cards. But we cannot do the reverse-engineering of the ROM card format for Roland synths we don't even own.

[noizeBot]

I would like to buy one of these.
I have contacted the website but not heard back from them.
Can anyone tell me if they are still in business?

[Playkeyboardnow]

who did you contact? If it was Musitronics, this company is still in business but, many things on their site listed are not available anymore. And it sometimes takes some time before they answer, and sometimes there is no reply at al...

[ʝɵʝɵ]

noizeBot is referring to the cards being advertised in this very thread. We are not Musitronics - but we are currently struck but an unfortunate event of sickness, so replying to orders currently takes a bit longer than usual. Stay tuned, you will get your reply soon!