re-coding Synth ROMs ???

[Joel_J_Braverman at mindscape.com]

john.. wrote:
>
> Hi,
>    I've seen various people discussing third-party software upgrades
> for old synths (ie Encore Electronics).... how do people go about working
> out what the code does?

  You get the service docs, pour over the schematics, try to figure out a
memory map from the CPU's point of view, and then have at the code with a
disassembler.  I suppose ideally you could ignore the original code and
write your own from scratch.  I know this is what JD and Neil did for
Europa, but I also know that they thoroughly dug into Roland's code as
well.  Whether this was because they figured they could improve it (they
decided it was better scrapped), or because they needed hardware info not
available from the schems I don't know.

> I ask because I'd really like to modify the
> behaviour of my OSCar (give it a better MIDI spec etc.).
>

  Well, at least Chris Hugget (sp?) is sort-of around still.  Maybe someone
could get info from him?

--
David Evans              (NeXTMail OK)
dfevans at bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Computer/Synth Junkie
http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo         "Default is the value selected by the
composer
Ontario, Canada           overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707
Manual