All about the Roland Jupiter-series

-----Original Message-----
From: Pons, Thomas [mailto:pons_t@...] 
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 1999 4:57 PM
To: 'analogue@...'
Subject: [AH] Jupiter-8 MIDI retrofit - help!


Hi AH'ers,

Once again, I'll need your help since I don't know what do do anymore! I've
bought a Jupiter-8 in a pawn shop, which was supposed to be FULLY
MIDI-retrofitted . There is a MIDI In & Out at the back and a black
push-button on the front panel (center-left). No manual. Since then, I've
done everything to locate the company responsible for the Midi kit to get an
user's manual, since the only MIDI thing I can do is basic NoteOn/NoteOff on
Ch1. It's not Encore, not Groove Electronics, not Ultima and, last but not
least, not Kenton. After opening the thing, this is what I've found:

Two boards have been added:

1st board (green): 1 Z80A CPU, 1 Z80SIO2, one EPROM with a sticker JP8 EES
MIDI, 1 TOSHIBA TMM20166AP-10, 1 RCA H510..."MIDICOMP" is written on
the board.
 
2nd board (white): eight RCAD510 in a row, 2 RCAH510, 1 CD74HCT374E...
 
The boards are connected to the JP with two ribbon cables (one grey,
one with the rainbow colors) that go on two different levels in the
interface board of the Jup with large connectors.
 
Thanks to the very helpful staff in Kenton, I've finally found a german
company called EES - Technik f\ufffdr Musik. The tech there recognized the first
board, but not the second...And he said he has never sold JP8 kits doing
more than NoteOn/Off and Arpeggio sync. No other way to have any
information. The pawn shop has contacted the seller who said he didn't know
how to use the kit neither...

My questions:

- Do you think that, considering the - quite numerous - chips, the two
boards and the large ribbon cables, it can be a simple NoteOn/NoteOff MIDI
kit? (In a word: did I get screw?)

- It seems that the mod has been done in Germany or Switzerland in the early
90's, partly by using an EES kit. May be some people on AH will recognize
their MIDI-retrofit?

- What should I do?


Thanks in advance,

Thomas (Paris/France)