Category Archives: Roland

Of G-Men and Farmers

There’s an interesting story concerning this Midiman GMan General MIDI sound module. It involves Midiman (better known as M-Audio), the Farmers Insurance Exchange, and also Dream/Atmel, Crystal Semiconductor, and Roland. (Apologies for the beat-up specimen.) The story of course concerns … Continue reading

Posted in Crystal Semi, Dream, Legal, MIDI, Roland, Sound | 20 Comments

Brightening Up

A depressingly yellowed Roland CM-64 led me to try retr0bright for the first time. The short story is that despite a few minor missteps, the experiment was a success. Yes, it really does work! Here’s what the CM-64 looked like … Continue reading

Posted in Fixes, Hardware Hacks, Roland | 7 Comments

Fixing an LAPC-I

A few days ago my almost new (i.e. not quite 25 years old) Roland LAPC-I arrived. It’s essentially a MT-32 synth on a stick. I plugged it into a Pentium board, tried playing some music and… nothing. Was it perhaps not jumpered … Continue reading

Posted in PC hardware, Roland | 12 Comments

SC-8820 Gripes

After a long while, I dusted off my Roland SC-8820 sound module which I bought used about 10 years ago. The goal was to drive it from an older PC via MIDI. This turned out to be a lot harder than … Continue reading

Posted in MIDI, Roland, Sound | 12 Comments

Do You Know These Peripherals?

After a long pause, here’s another guessing game. Do you recognize the five peripherals below? This should be very easy since the manufacturers’ names are clearly visible, only the model numbers got “lost”. This is all 1980s-1990s hardware from (obviously) … Continue reading

Posted in MIDI, Roland, Sound, Yamaha | 10 Comments