[sdiy] Those darned Casio chips!

[Rainer Buchty]

>To their partial credit, though, I must add that Yamaha and Korg are
>not the very worst offenders.  Ensoniq is, and by far.  They never even
>provided proper service manuals for any of their products.  No
>schematics, no component-level repairs -- only expensive board swaps.
>"Too proprietary", they claimed.

Now how familiar does that sound... Thanks to Ensoniq Scotland who
opened the gates after the Emu/Ensoniq merger so that at least a fair
amount of schematics leaked.

Being now a part of Creative Labs surely aids the corporate paranoia as
CL were unwilling to release any programming information for the Emu10k.

Regarding Ensoniq, I never understood their point.

(1) If I can create a schematic drawing on my own by just using a diode
tester, pencil and paper, any competitor can, too.

(2) If that holy sound chip was used for the Apple IIGS and thusly
included in the Apple IIGS hardware manual, what's the point in bitching
about proprietary or not? But even, if there wasn't any information out,
then

(3) If I can disassemble and document the OS and figuring out most
register assigments just from the code, any competitor can, too.

Speaking of Kawai: It was sorta hilarious that *in 2003* I had to sign
an NDA for getting the K3m schematics. First of all, Mark "Manual Manor"
Glinsky sells them as well. Second, see (1) above.

Rainer