Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

Does anyone remember how to update the Korg Prophecy firmware?

Long story short: I bought the #20 ROMset for the latest (last) system update, since sysex cannot be sent back and forth unless this version is installed.

Problem is that my Prophecy firmware was v1.13, which isn't compatible with the #20 ROMset. I found the .bin files for firmware update v 1.7, but I don't know HOW to transfer/load/update them to the Prophecy.

fyi, this information is NOT in the Korg Prophecy Service Manual...

Thanks in advance for your help!

With Korg stuff of this era, the OS is usually not updatable directly on the chips - you usually exchanged or got new chips, and just swapped the chips into the sockets. That's how eg I upgraded my Wavestation from V2.x to V3.x back in the day.

I suspect the bin files you've got are just images of the chips, and you'd need to knowhow and equipment to get blank chips and burn those images onto them.

You're probably better off buying the latest firmware on actual chips - there are plenty of these for sale, a quick google search turned up plenty - then, assuming your chips are socketted, you just switch them out. Worth checking though, as apparently some were not socketed and therefore soldered in - these will be harder as you'd have to desolder the chip, solder in new sockets, then put the new chips in.