Nicoya's Never-updated Blog: A Sample Of My True Power

This is a Roland S-760, a sampler. We've previously discussed ROMplers like my Roland XV-5050, and this sampler is almost the same as that, except for the part where it doesn't come with any ROM samples. Instead, you load samples onto it either by recording them in from another instrument, or copying them onto the internal storage.

And by "internal storage" I mean external storage, because this thing only comes with a floppy drive and a SCSI port on the back. I've got a BlueSCSI on the way to handle the latter, but while I'm waiting for that I need to at least boot this thing up and check it out, which means I need a boot floppy.

But we don't do floppies around here, so let's get something more modern in that drive bay.

This is a Gotek, a floppy drive emulator. It's pretty much the defacto standard for replacing these old floppy drives, and it functions by storing floppy images on a USB thumb drive that you shove into the front. The problem with them is that the default firmware kind of sucks, so pretty much everyone loads FlashFloppy onto them instead.

But first, why are there two of them?

For reasons. These reasons have to do with these extra ports on the back of one of the units.

Make a mental note, we'll be getting back to this in a future blog post.

Anyway, if I'm gonna install this Gotek I'll need to dig in and scoop out the old floppy, so let's get inside.

And we've got a friendly message from the Roland engineers.

Oh good, it's world standard. Here I was worried it was only standard in Japan and perhaps East Asia.

Hmm, what are these boards at the back?

No, no, we're not getting distracted. Focus!

Removing the floppy drive is about as straightforward as it gets. Just two screws on each side and it's out.

The two brackets on the bottom get transferred over. The Gotek even includes self-tapping plastic screws, which is nice.

You know, I'm just realizing something. These ports on the back are arranged a bit differently.

I wonder if he power cable is gonna reach all the way over there to the four pins on the left?

That would appear to be a "no". But at least the floppy cable reaches with length to spare.

Well I guess I've got a side-project on my hands. Better knock out both at once while I'm at it.

Hmm that's interesting, this one is missing those extra boards... No, no, focus!

Look away if you're squeamish, things are gonna get a bit brutal.

We can rebuild it. Better, faster, and more importantly longer.

And I didn't even forget to put the heat-shrink on before soldering the final connections. Nice.

Rinse and repeat, and did I say the power cable was too short? I don't know why I would say that, it looks like it reaches just fine.

So it's time to crack open the thumb drive, which is packed in the most delightful frustration-free packaging imaginable.

I FEEL SO UNFRUSTRATED WITH THIS PACKAGING.

And I just need to plug it in and... oh wait right, I forgot the part about the default firmware sucking ass. Let's deal with that.

Usually one would do this using a USB A-to-A cable, which is a bit too much of a cursed device for me to willingly own, so we'll be doing this the slightly harder way, by connecting to the serial port hidden in this 9 pin header next to the power connector... which naturally doesn't come with header pins soldered in.

Skipping past the soldering montage, I can now jumper the device into DFU mode (which stands for Device ~~Fucked Up~~ Firmware Update) and run the flashing software on my wintendo, which definitely wasn't written in the same year this sampler was built and never updated since.

And done, it's running the FlashFloppy firmware. After copying the boot disk image over, easily downloaded from Roland's website (and renamed to 000.img so it's easy to find), things are looking promising.