KVR Audio

llatham · Post by **llatham** » Thu Oct 24, 2013 4:45 am

Well, I've broken out my old D5. Except for a couple of sticky buttons, it works fine.

I found my old RAM card, and put it in, to backup some patches I made, but it gave a bad battery message - it was old.

So I bought a new battery, replaced it, put the card in and it said card not ready. I pulled it out and on closer inspection it was peeling apart at the end you insert and the protective sleeve was misaligned and not springing back properly. I gave up on it and returned the battery.

1. Are there any substitute cards to be found? Used ones or NOS with batteries replaced are just too crazy expensive. I'd put that money towards a new synth.

2. Is there any other way to back up my patches. I have Cubase LE - can I send the patches to Cubase and "record" a sysex dump or something? If so, could I use Cubase to re-load them?

My concern is that the internal battery in the D5 is going to fail. I mean, it's what, 23 years old or so. I'm afraid it's going to go out on me at a gig, and I've read that it's unplayable when the battery dies (or even as it starts to end its lifespan).

So I think I can replace the battery with no problems, but if I take it out, it's going to lose my patches. They're nothing special and most of them I could literally write down the settings on paper - I'm using mostly factory sounds in Performance Mode where they're just layered - I've only edited a couple of actual tones (and for the most part that was simply increasing the release time and removing pitch envelope mess, and maybe an octave shift or fine tune shift of the partials). Still, if it'd be easier to record them into a sequencer and then load them back, I'd prefer to do that.

3. I did an "initialize" on the instrument and it turned my "i" bank into a duplicate of the "b" bank. I can edit and save tones in the "i" bank but I remember there were some cool sounds in there. I think some of the Performance patches were built using "i" patches. For example, on that reset, all my Performance Patches now say "Initial Patch". I've just been setting them up with a and b patches, as well as the few i patches I've edited. I remember a "Hammered Piano" and "Tapped E Piano" patches that I really remembered liking, as well as a few others. I've found a website with zip files of the original patches in sysex format - could I load them into the synth in the same way?

I'm figuring if worse comes to worst, I simply replace the battery and use a paper backup to reconfigure my patches. But if the sysex dumps work, I might could save just my new patches, upload the original factory patches, then send just my single patches/edited sounds over. I realize any factory patches using the edited sounds would also change but the ones I've edited have changed so little from the original (I start working from something close to the end result I want) that it probably won't affect any factory patches using them.

Does this sound reasonable?

TIA,
Steve

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Thu Oct 24, 2013 1:18 pm

Yeah, do a sysex bank dump to a sequencer that can handle that. (just googled that subject and MidiOx is recommended for that.) Change something silly and test weather you can restore the sysex dump (the silly change should be reverted)
If that works, replace the battery.

pocvecem · Post by **pocvecem** » Thu Oct 24, 2013 4:02 pm

If you want the D5/10/20/110 sound i'd suggest getting a second hand D110 sound module before putting much money into an old keyboard.
A friend of mine has a D5 and i had a D20 for many years. The hardware of the D5 is much cheaper (buttons and keyboard) than that of the other synths from that series.
I got a D110 for 50 Euro some years ago and it works like on the first day.
For sound storage and editing i still use Emagic Sounddiver. Always worked fine for me on XP and Win7/64. A second hand Sounddiver is often cheaper than a "vintage" ram-card. Got my license for 40 Euro.

Prevalence · Post by **Prevalence** » Thu Oct 24, 2013 4:39 pm

In my experince, old Roland RAM cards will display an error (after changing the battery) until new data is copied onto it....

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Fri Oct 25, 2013 8:05 am

Yeah that's a common RAM card message. Try reformatting it before giving up on it. SysEx is always the safest option as RAM cards can often give errors for no good reason I have found on my JD-990.

llatham · Post by **llatham** » Sat Nov 09, 2013 5:35 am

I ended up recording sysex into cubase and as suggested, tried a simple change and it worked.

I also found the factory defaults from Roland UK online and used a program called Sysex to send that to it. It worked.

Bought the battery, took it apart and replaced it, and loaded up the original factory sounds as well as the ones I had created (which I had done an "initialization" procedure which actually wipes the "i" bank and replaces it with duplicates of the "b" tones, and re-initializes all the performance patches).

A little manual perusal and I figured out how to store and send just a single patch. So all I have left to do is figure out how to save the altered tones I made for a few patches and I should be good to go. Just have to write over the "i" bank sounds since the memory card was falling apart. That means any patches that already use those i bank sounds will change as well, but some of them are really unusable - and I know I can always get them back with the sysex dump!

Now if I can just figure out a way to control the Sound Canvas with a controller keyboard instead of a computer I'm golden.

Steve

mztk · Post by **mztk** » Mon Nov 11, 2013 10:37 am

having had a m256 clone kicking around for many years, i discovered
the battery was dead whe i got a d110 - i did the dumbest thing when
trying to change the battery and ended up with a split memory card,
a real bugger to put back together: spring jumps out, etc etc.
but i have superglued it back together and it works fine. i lost the
spring action on the contact guard but it doesn't matter (for a minute
i had the spring hooking too, but you have too work fast with superlue,
so it is now permanent as it is).
best use of the memory card is maybe as storage for extra tone patches,
fitted semi-permanently, and to do your main patch backups via sysex.

BlackMelvin · Post by **BlackMelvin** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 11:28 pm

Hi. I'm really pleased to have found this post. I have recently acquired a D5 with virtually identical issues - Battery Warning Message and patches that sound garbled and distorted. They do sound better ( almost usable) with the Modulation Wheel full on though which I thought was odd. A block of around 6 - 8 keys don't work either. I'm hoping this is also related to the Battery message and not something more catastrophic.... Is this likely do you think?
I haven't saved any of my own edited patches or anything on it so, if I simply straight swap the battery will I need to re-load all the default ones using an editor or something ( I don't have a Memory Card btw )?
Last question... I've taken the back off thinking the battery would be obvious but unfortunately no. Where the hell is it?
Regards, Jim

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Sat Mar 29, 2014 2:08 pm

You will need to take tke bottom off to change the battery. Full details here:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/5006553-post15.html

Reloading patches is simple. For SysEx files use MIDI-OX. For .mid MIDI files just import into your DAW and play them out to your D-5. Use 'One-Way rather than 'Handshake' when dumping and receiving MIDI.

The original patches are available here:
http://www.roland.co.uk/Support/Downloa ... atches.zip

chiptraxxx · Post by **chiptraxxx** » Fri Feb 27, 2015 12:40 pm

Needed some space and was going to sell mine but didnt find any buyer. Hmm why not make it smaller i thougt and removed the keys, joystick + moved one board ontop of the other and yes it became approx 10times smaller

some reading about the project http://chiptraxxx.blogspot.se

edit: dont forget you will need a metal saw

mztk · Post by **mztk** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 4:16 pm

'chopped' D-20. found like this. deserves a tidier job some day.
(maybe tabletop would be better, in a sloped alu' rackbox)
the data slider makes it easier to program than a D110.
(bad photo)

mztk · Post by **mztk** » Fri Mar 06, 2015 9:10 am

chiptraxxx wrote:Needed some space and was going to sell mine but didnt find any buyer. Hmm why not make it smaller i thougt and removed the keys, joystick + moved one board ontop of the other and yes it became approx 10times smaller

some reading about the project http://chiptraxxx.blogspot.se

edit: dont forget you will need a metal saw

if you could add an encoder here, for 'data slider', you've got faster programming.
much easier to edit partials simultaneously, mute, copy etc. - getting to those
functions on a D110 is a weird routine that is easy to forget.

She Changed Her Mind · Sat Mar 07, 2015 5:43 am

@Mr Arkadin

Thank you for the info about the battery location.

Help with an old Roland D5