My DIY Yamaha RX5 programmable waveform cartridge: RX5USB

gligli · Joined: Dec 16, 2012 Posts: 5 Location: France

Hello,

I'm new to this forum, and I'm not sure this is the right category to post this, sorry if it isn't.

So, I love my RX5, but I became quickly limited by the small amount of onboard sounds, so I started searching for waveform cartridges.
I quickly found out that there were few of them, and they were rare and expensive.

I know quite a bit about programming, electronics, and that sort of stuff so I thought: what if I could make a programmable waveform cartridge?

Waveform cartridges

I bought the cheapest cartridge I could find: the RX5 ROM, which apparently was sold with the RX5 itself, and started to dump it.

Inside there's two 1 Megabit mask roms of relatively standard pinout, each chip contains an independant sound bank.

Sound banks format is relatively easy to understand: there's a header with one 32 bytes entry per sound, sample rate is 25Khz, and samples are either 8bit or 12bit signed PCM (two 12 bit samples being packed in 3 bytes).

Hardware

My design is based around a "Teensy++ USB Development Board" ( http://www.pjrc.com/store/teensypp_pins.html ) and a 4 Megabit flash chip: the SST39SF040 ( http://www.kesaitech.com.cn/gb/files/39SF040_020A_010A.pdf ).
The flash chip replaces the 2 mask ROMs, and the Teensy board is used to program it through USB.
I took advantage of the ridiculously small price difference between 2 Mbit and 4 Mbit chips to add a "side" switch to my design, so that you can change which pair of banks the RX5 will access.

Here's the current schematics: http://sfx.gligli.free.fr/zik/rx5usb/2012-12-16/rx5usb_sch_rev1.1.pdf
I also designed a PCB board: http://sfx.gligli.free.fr/zik/rx5usb/2012-12-16/rx5usb_pcb_rev2.8.pdf

The schematics work on breadboard, but I haven't tested the PCB board yet (still being printed).

Software

I also coded a computer app to edit and program the sound banks, it's in lazarus (object pascal), Windows only right now, but it shouldn't be very hard to port it to other systems.

Here's a video where I demonstrate it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zNYN3vE_iY (it's in French tho)

By the way, one nice feature I added not long ago: it can import Fairlight CMI IIx voice disks ^^

Project files

The whole project is under GPL v3 license, and is hosted on github: https://github.com/gligli/rx5usb
I'm quite close to a first binary release, which will probably happen this year.

My breadboard prototype:
Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

Here are 2 audio demos:
http://sfx.gligli.free.fr/zik/rx5usb/2012-12-02/camarche.mp3 (my sampled voice, and TR707 samples being played by the RX5)
http://sfx.gligli.free.fr/zik/rx5usb/2012-12-13/fairzero.mp3 (me noodling some famous Fairlight sounds with a MIDI keyboard attached to the RX5)

Contributing

So, all of this is free and gratis, and I hope it will be usefull to others Smile

Right now it needs testing, reviewing and all that stuff...

I also hope someone will dump the Yamaha WRC cartridges, so they are available to anyone, and that sound banks made with my app will be freely available, tho You are free not to release them.

Phew that was a lot of typing ! Smile

seaweedfactory · Joined: Apr 12, 2006 Posts: 61 Location: Earth

andrewF · Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 9:06 pm Post subject:

Great job - well done

Bogus Noise · Joined: Jun 03, 2009 Posts: 65 Location: Sheffield

Wow, nice work!

aladan · Joined: Aug 13, 2011 Posts: 52 Location: Australia

Hi gligli, this is great!
I have a few RX5s, and would be interested in being able to load new sounds. One of my RX5s already has the Robin Whittle mod (EPROM chips added internally) with some extra sound banks available.
I would be happy to be a beta-tester for you. I have a spare teensy already - once you have confirmed the PCB layout works could you send me the .pcb file so I can get one etched and build the interface?
Thanks,
A.

gligli · Joined: Dec 16, 2012 Posts: 5 Location: France

Hi, thanks!

I got my printed PCB yesterday from a friend, it didn't print very well but I fixed the damaged tracks, should be ok as a test PCB still.

PCB files are there: https://github.com/gligli/rx5usb/tree/master/board_sch (I used KiCad) , I'm fairly confident with it, but yeah it's quite logical I test it first Smile

Still, It's cool you want to test it, that's what it needs the most right now Smile

gligli · Joined: Dec 16, 2012 Posts: 5 Location: France

Ok, I confirm that revision 2.8 of my PCB (the one that's on my github) works Very Happy

Actually plugging it into the RX5 stressed me a lil, but it went well Smile

Also I had a few occasional sound clicks with the breadboard, but none yet with the PCB.

gligli · Joined: Dec 16, 2012 Posts: 5 Location: France

Hi again,

As promised, here's the beta 1 archive Smile

:

http://dl.free.fr/vFdvp09Sj (also attached to this post)

There should be everything you need inside, in English and French.
For those who want to test it, please report any unclear, false or buggy stuff you could find, that's what a beta is for Smile

I won't make fully assembled cartridges or even PCBs, but anybody can, even if they sell it.
They only have to publish their changes under the same license I used (GNU GPL v3).

rx5usb_beta1.zip

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Mr. Pete · Joined: Mar 17, 2013 Posts: 1 Location: Toronto, Canada

Thank you Gigli ~ Merci beaucoup
i LOVE my RX-5 Cool

Does anyone run your Editor Software under OSX on Mac? any special requirements or instructions on how to do it?

many thanks, PETE

https://soundcloud.com/misterpete

Hollywood · Joined: May 22, 2012 Posts: 17 Location: Ireland

I'm very interested in this, I'd certainly buy a pcb if someone made one! Also, I have the WRC-04 cartridge, how would I go about getting the data off?
*edit* So it looks like rom ripping is somewhat beyond my capabilities...

Hollywood · Joined: May 22, 2012 Posts: 17 Location: Ireland

So, I'm getting the parts together to build one (or more) of these, but I'm at a loss as to how to house it... I want to use the machine live so it's a serious consideration before I use the PCB layouts here... any ideas?

Fernández · Joined: Oct 21, 2013 Posts: 1 Location: spain

Hi, in new here and sorry about mu english. I follow this theme and in very interesantes. I hace a rx7 and I want to add it more wounds. My cuestión is if I could make easyly a similar cartridge with this PCI.

VIA VT6212L

Thanks

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le captain · Joined: Jul 19, 2014 Posts: 1 Location: belgium leuven

hey,

Is there any chance of buying one of those cards?
Or getting the pcb for download (i did not manage to download any kind of gerber file from github)

PS: I love the rx5!

prodigal_nt · Joined: Apr 21, 2018 Posts: 1 Location: London

There’s a japanese guy called pharmasonic who manufactured a bunch of these and has them listed on a japanese Yahoo auction.

If you want to wait 3 weeks and pay an extra 70 dollars for shipping and customs, only to receive a caseless device which dangerously hangs out of the back of the RX5 and obviously never worked properly in the first place, then go right ahead and buy one.

Otherwise you should save yourself a lot of aggravation and get down to [EDIT - making your own from GliGli's surely awesome designs] - buying a RAM4 or loading voices via an editor and sysex, because that is definitely where you will end up eventually.

He has an auto responder on his email support which whinges about ill health. I genuinely hope whatever ailment he has gets much, much worse, or he contracts something even more painful, soon.

dirtybeatz · Joined: Mar 01, 2019 Posts: 1 Location: Australia

Hey guys,

Gligli your RX5USB and software is awesome, lots of fun! Sorry for pulling up an old thread but can't find the answer anywhere. I have the Yamaha RX5, a RAM5 data cartridge and a Gligli RX5USB device made by Pharmasonic. I have successfully loaded some sound banks onto the RX5USB which i am able to use in RX5 via key assign. I am trying to save these voices to the RAM5 for later use, though when I try to load voices from RAM5 back to RX5 experience error message ‘format conflict’. I have switched off multibank mode and formatted all 4 banks individually. I was wondering if anyone has been successful in saving voices from a RX5 voice cassette (or RX5USB) to a RAM4/RAM5 data cartridge and then retrieving/loading these voices? Any tips or what am i doing wrong? I’ve read the manual and followed instructions.

Thanks, Henry.

ncosic · Joined: Oct 18, 2019 Posts: 1 Location: Serbia

Currently there are no executable files in gui-tool on GitHub. You have to compile the tool yourself so you can upload the samples to your awesome RX5USB. Here are the instructions:

- Download the Free Pascal https://www.freepascal.org/download.var and
- Lazarus IDE https://www.lazarus-ide.org/forums.html?page=downloads ,
- install both in default location.
- download the source code from https://github.com/gligli/rx5usb/archive/master.zip
- Open the project file /gui_tool/rx5usb_tool.lpi from Lazarus, and click build.

This should give you your working .exe in the gui_tool directory. Copy the entire gui_tool to Program Files dir and pin it to Start.

If you find this useful, please subscribe to my YouTube channel dedicated to making music with vintage & Eurorack gear. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk5DfQPIfO0kiy107RZMGGg

hangnef · Joined: Feb 27, 2018 Posts: 2 Location: USA

This is amazing! I just picked up an RX5 and was planning on circuit bending it, following this to some degree:

http://gumielectronic.net/?p=968

Idea is I would be shorting 2 ROM addr pins to get different sounds. I did something similar to my Alesis HR16.

From what I can tell, I can't do this kind of thing w/ the RX5USB as it uses a flash chip, not an EPROM. Or am I missing something w/ how the cart works in tandem with the mainboard roms?

ilovemusic69 · Joined: Sep 16, 2020 Posts: 1 Location: Mars

Hi! I was curious if anyone had a Gligli RX5 USB for sale or if anyone could provide a more indepth tutorial on how to build. I've never soldered before and I'm wary to get something wrong. Also curious if anyone has built a casing for it? Any help would be greatly appreciated Smile

charliecrash · Joined: May 08, 2021 Posts: 3 Location: Northern Hemisphere

Hi everybody. My first post in this forum, but I have been following this thread for some years.

I have finally got myself an RX5USB MK2, made by pharmasonic, just to test it in my Yamaha PTX-8, and as I suspected it came with some problems. The first one is purely mechanical because the socket for the Waveform Data Cartridge on the PTX-8 is much deeper seated than in the RX-5, but with the faceplate off, and removed the cartridge guide, it fits, with some room to wiggle.
Only one mm to the metalpiece holding the headphone socket, but it's testable at least.

Anyway, to the critical question, does it work at all? Oh YES it does, and here is proof.

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

Ive also tried to program RX5USB with homemade samples, and yes, those also work, but... I found a bug, which I have also written a PM to Gligli about.

If any of the 8 voice-slots on the PTX-8 is looped, the cartridge locks up. The yellow activity-LED lights up and stay lit, and you can only load the samples from the cartridge, not play them.

Once I found that out, I programmed all the slots without loops, and then everything works. I can play several cartridge samples simultanously and trigger them really fast, all is ok - but not with looped sounds. Even when only the internal sounds is looped, it locks up as soon as you play one one of those, and plays fine again as soon as you release the loop.

I hope this bugreport reaches Gligli, or those who now develop and maintain the firmware for the RX5USB, as it would be really great if this bug got fixed in the future.

I've also heard from the RX5 group on facebook that there sometimes is problems with playing sounds in reverse, from RX5USB, but I have yet not encountered this bug myself as I don't have an RX-5, only PTX-8.

Regards
Charlie Crash

infindebula · Joined: Sep 29, 2011 Posts: 29 Location: Canada

charliecrash · Joined: May 08, 2021 Posts: 3 Location: Northern Hemisphere