Kawai Synthesizers

One thing that may be possible to increase the RAM is
to piggyback another RAM chip on top of the one that
is already in place on the circuit board.  The pinouts
are standard for these older chips.  

  A better idea is to use a small older PC to store
the information for the voices and simply swap banks. 
Unfortunately the designers of MIDI back in 1982 did
not use the standard RS-232  serial port baud rates to
implement the MIDI standard.  Had they done so,
everything would have been so much easier over the
past twenty years.

  There is a MIDI port on two of the unused Joystick
connector pins in almost every PC with a sound card
out there.  However, to use this joystick MIDI port,
one needs a special cable.  Technically, this cable
turns the current-loop MIDI signals into standard TTL
logic signals used by the PC.  In the real world this
is a special cable that costs $39 and has $0.39 worth
of parts inside.
  The second hurdle to overcome in order to use the PC
joystick MIDI port is the Microsoft operating system. 
The MIDI port can only be accessed through very
confusing, underdocumented, and difficult to
understand, specialized software constructions called
API linkages.  There are one or two references to
writing code for MIDI using API calls on the web, but
they are underdocumented (i.e. incomprehensible) and
the examples don't work as written.

  When I can't find any editor/librarian programs for
a particular synth that I'm using, I used to write the
program myself in Turbo C for DOS and the MPU-401
interface.  It wasn't easy or fun, but it did
eventually work and I learned a lot. 
  Now I just sell the synth module on eBay.  Yes it's
that bad.  

  Another possiblility is to use Visual Basic with
standard serial port interface programming.  Then use
a mid-1990's-on Yamaha tone module for the MIDI
interface because every Yamaha from this period onward
has a built-in MIDI-to-PC-serial-port convertor called
a to-Host connector.  It uses a special cable, but
this cable is well documented and can be made by
rewiring an Apple Mac printer cable that has a MINI
Din 6 on one end and DB-9 jack on the other.

  This is not such a bad approach because the Yamaha
General MIDI voice sets are exceptional and tone
modules of this era (like the TG-100 and the CBX-T3)
sell for between $30 and $50.  Yamaha also freely
supplies a driver that converts the output from
standard MIDI programs to the serial port to-Host
cable.  Or you can program it directly through the
serial port.  

  The sys-ex data needed to make specialized Kawai
editor programs and software modules is in the back of
the manuals available here for free download.

  Good luck everyone.  By the way, if anyone has
experience programming the joystick MIDI port with API
calls and would be willing to share tips and maybe
source code examples, please e-mail us or post them in
the files sections.

Thank you,
Alan Probandt
Portland, Oregon USA


--- narfman96 <narfman96@...> wrote:
> I'll bet these cards are very hard to come by
> nowadays. I need to 
> know if anyone has any of these they will part with.
> I'm going to 
> attempt to test the newer cards which start at 64K.
> They should only 
> access the first 16k from the synth since added
> address lines in the 
> card access the next higher ram locations. What
> would be neat would 
> be to add switching that could get to each bank of
> 16K. So each card 
> could hold a multiple of 16 up to its full capacity.
> Are these cards 
> 68pin PCMCIA based? So many questions so little
> time... Thanks, 
> Narfman 
> 
> 
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