Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

Hi everyone,

I now have one final question about this that I hope someone out there might know. I am about to get an EX8000 from a guy and he did the "press 1 + 2 while powering on" to get the version number. his shows Ver 05. The latest is 12 for the DW8000.

I'm 99% sure that the EX is the same hardware / features 1:1 as the DW in a rack version. Still has arpeggiator, etc..

But I'm concerned I might have sysex issues like i did with my DW8000 that had Ver 07.. maybe 05 doesn't have the same problems. we'll see, but yes this comes back to the question. anyone know if the EPROM would be compatible.

Would it be safe to test? I figure maybe if it were not compatible it would just not work.. no high voltage going through that chip i would imagine. However, maybe it could burn something out if wired up wrong.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

I'm super stoked about getting this device as I want to scale down and retire my DW8000 and find it a new home where it can be played like it should be.

Thanks,
Caleb

part12studios wrote:Would it be safe to test? I figure maybe if it were not compatible it would just not work.. no high voltage going through that chip i would imagine. However, maybe it could burn something out if wired up wrong.

I have no specific experience with that exact combination of DW/EX firmware swapping, but if the EPROMs are the same capacity (27C256, etc.) then there isn't much danger in the electrical aspects of it. It would just make the CPU go haywire until turned off, potentially.

The danger would be from the removal/insertion and potentially bending pins, static discharge, or not putting one or both synths back together properly, losing screws, etc.

I'd hold off and only monkey about with it if it becomes an issue.

cool yes i agree, i won't tinker unless there is an actual problem. i HAD to upgrade my DW8000 Ver 07 because it had a very specific issue with not previewing sysex patch zone pushes from midiquest.. while my Ver 11 DW8000 did just fine. So yea we'll see how it goes. I get the device Wednesday night.

Thanks for the insight. I know this is pretty edge case stuff which is why I wanted to look for some expert advise before doing something foolish.

Thanks!
Caleb

Caleb - if you still have your Ver 07 ROM, pop it in the EX and see if it works. If it does, then that could indicate the Ver 12 might work as well.

yea good point.. i'm not 100% sure i still have the 07.. i traded the "older" DW awhile back so i'm down to just the one with v12.. but yea it would be nice to not have to open / remove / replace the DW if I have the 07 around somewhere.. i'll have to dig around. i know where it SHOULD be.

Not sure if it will make a difference but for clarity the ex8000 isn’t exactly the same....no arp on th ex8000 for example.

oh wow i thought it had the arp! that's serendipitous news actually. because I ended up having cold feet about it last night.. the deal was "fair" but it was basically the market value and to tie up that much money into a device like that was not wise for me because it would be something i plan on using for a long time..

more so because I have a DW8000 and the ARP is a huge (YUGE) selling point for me on why the DW is still in my studio and many other synth's like the JX-8p and Juno 106 found new homes, no disrespect to their unique sounds. and the joystick is another nice thing to have for performance.. so looks like I'm going to keep the DW..

Thank you everyone for the feedback. I sincerely believe the roms are not compatible if the arp is missing.. and I will say that from what the owner told me, he was able to do sysex dumps with it's 05 version which my 07 didn't.. which makes me think they are on separate version numbers.

Thanks!
Caleb