Happy 2023! Hopefully this year will be better than the last few years have been.
As you’ve probably gathered, there hasn’t been much going on here. COVID has impacted the supply chain so it’s become more difficult and expensive to produce PCB’s. Therefore, I won’t be doing anything new for a while.
The DSS-1 upgrade is essentially discontinued. Since I was building them myself, I found it took around 7 hours to assemble, test, program, modify existing boards, etc. per kit. And there are some outstanding software issues which I don’t expect to be fixed anytime soon. So I’ve opted to focus my efforts on a different approach to the upgrade. However, I don’t expect to make progress on this (or the DSM-1) anytime soon.
I do still have the following:
ASR-10 SCSI and digital I/O, EPS-16 SCSI and Flash Bank, and CEM5530 replacement modules
In addition I will no longer offer repair services to equipment (other than the boards that I have sold).
Hi Tom, what are the outstanding issues with the DSS-1 upgrade firmware? I’ve had mine for about 20 months and haven’t noticed anything funky, but I also haven’t been too demanding of it. Would be nice to know what I should look out for. Thanks!
The most glaring issue is that some third party DSS-1 disks won’t load correctly due to illegal characters (by FAT16 standards) in the file names. Also, it the mod doesn’t work correctly with some OLED displays. Finally, I found an issue where audio is distorted when you play too many notes near the ‘top key’ of a sample. This appears to be a heat related hardware issue with the custom Korg IC’s. Whether this could be mitigated in software, I don’t know – or if it only happens with the upgraded software.
Thanks Tom, appreciate the reply.
I’m so happy to see your progress and you’re safe.
Completely understandable Tom. The supply situation is such a problem and doesn’t look like resolving any time soon.
Spoke to Guy W today who is placing his final JX-10 VFD order for the same reason and indeed Noritake can only supply half of what he was intending to buy.
‘Interesting’ times :-/
Where can I get an ASR-10 SCSI board? Sampler Zone are sold out.
Hi Tom!
I´m pleased to hear that you are fine during all the uppevil in the world.
I might be interested in the ASR 10 digital I/O. Have you been able to figure out the possible over-heating issue on the ASR 10 rack-unit?
What is the asking price for the digital I/O unit for shipping to Sweden?
All the best,
Hi Tom great work!
I recently bought an ASR-X Expanded, with 8 outputs and the World Rom and 32mB RAM but no SCSI board. Does your board fit on a black ASR-X? Its the only thing that makes it unfriendly to use with modern hardware and its a pity to have it collecting dust.
THanks in advance!
different board.