My DIY Yamaha RX5 programmable waveform cartridge: RX5USB

[gligli]

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:


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

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 !

[seaweedfactory]

.

[andrewF]

Great job -

[Bogus Noise]

Wow, nice work!

[aladan]

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]

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

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

[gligli]

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

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

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

[gligli]

Hi again,

As promised, here's the beta 1 archive :

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

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).

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rx5usb_beta1.zip
Description:		Download
Filename:	rx5usb_beta1.zip
Filesize:	4.26 MB
Downloaded:	1008 Time(s)

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[Mr. Pete]

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

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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