Roland R-8 ROM Dump

[ripsnort]

Newbie here,

With inspiration from the TR-505 bending and hacking thread I decided to try to venture into the R-8 ROM and see what is there (note: the service manual is easily found by internet search for pinouts, I also have dump of a ROM card).

It seems like the ROM dump comes scrambled like 505 and 626 (this time it is 16bit).

I am attaching the dump and taking any suggestions on where to go from here. I hear mostly noise when I try to playback, but you can hear some of the drum hits through the noise.. From what I read on the 505 thread there could be bits that need to be swapped in every byte, there could be odd/even bit decoding, etc. But this is my first time venturing into hacking/dumps/decoding, so hopefully someone can use their ears and brain and venture some guesses on how to decode.

Cheers!

(edited R-8)

[playthatbeat]

Hey Rip - welcome along!

Had a play with that dump file - opening it in various editors as a .raw file - this will force the editor (wavlab in my case) to ask if the file is 8 or 16 bit or whatever, so You can try lots of various ways to play it back..

16 or 8 bit does not really matter in this case, as it just plays back faster or slower. Also, the speed it plays back at is not really any help, as programmers would always speed up the samples to store them in less space.

It does sound like it's got some issues alright - but i think it's not a matter of it being the physical lines to the chip being jumbled up as in the case of the 505. the sound of the raw 505 rom unscrambled is just all noise and garbage, YOUR dump clearly has some sounds buried in there - especially in the second half of the file as it plays - You can hear all manner of clanging and so on.

Is the R8 stereo? it could be using the same scheme as the alesis HR16 to do the stereo - in which case the rom is probably the odd/even slice trick, and maybe even 2 roms, or a single extended package rom with a dual enable (gears!)..

Listening to the dump again, it's far to 'hash' sounding to be anything other then some form of odd/even scheme.. compare it to how a circuit bent digital machine sounds - you know, all that ringing and aliasing and glitching - that's not what i hear here i think. this has a layer of digital noise across it, but clearly has the metallic sounds buried in there also.

Maybe try some of the splitting odd/even tools and tricks on the dump?

also: what is the rom like? how many pins? any details on the diagram for the rom chip as to how many "A lines" there are? should be 8 - then you know it's an 8 bit buss etc.