Roland D70 screen, MB revision and editor

[my05]

Hi all, i'm very glad that someone picked up the glove and resurected the forum (thank you Sir, Madame whoever you are :) ).

I bought a pristine D-70 a while back from the first owner (it had been more or less sitting for 30 years in the same spot). It came with a number of ROM and RAM cards (the 256 one) and there is almost no issue with it, except for the annoying beep from the inverter. My plan is to replace the screen with a more modern LCD (running 5 or if it is 3.3 volt), and this time around i was thinking i'd be lazy and buy something that is more or less "slot in". But apparently there are two revisions of the mainboard.

Recently, i found the various firmware versions for the D-70 and they mentioned that there were some "breaking point" depending on what revision you were on. Version 1.00 to 1.12 (as the highest) for one revision and anything up to 1.19 for the later revision. My unit runs 1.16 currently and i was thinking if it was ok to assume that 1.16 means the later revision (which in turn means revision 2 of the mainboard?). Or do i rather open up the bottom to find out physically?

After taking care of the screen issue, i wanted to find some editor if such exists out there. I know about the MidiQuest one, but that (i think) come as this multi-editor with heaps of instruments that i'm not interested in editing. So i wonder if there are alternatives out there for the D-70? I realize it was never a huge "hit" but as there are editors available for extremely nished instruments, perhaps there is one for the D-70 as well?

[kiskadar69]

(Roland D-70) "Some machines with old firmware work perfectly with editor/librarians, others with newer firmware do not." (nick)

"If all you want to do with a D-70 is call up preset patches and play, it's a great keyboard.(...) If you intend to use it with a computer and/or incorporate it into a large MIDI rig, or anything remotely complex, forget about it. According to some editing software people that I talked to, different firmware rev's fix some things, but then other things don't work right. Not a good synth for tinkerer's and programmers though editing patches sucks, and I know a lot about synth editing. Some of the edit pages are only available with one sequence of button presses, some other pages are available in many different edit sequences. It is real obvious that there were about 6 different development teams working on the D-70 that never talked to each other. You'll find yourself deep into an edit sometimes, and want to go to edit another parameter, only to find you can't just go to it, you have to back out of where you were, one screen at a time, until you get to 'home base', then go where you want to go. Even in it's heydey (1990-1992), there was little in the way of third party sounds for the D-70. This was most likely because of the obtuse user interface. How hard is it to program the D-70? After two years I barely had a handle on the thing. Patch editor: would have made a big difference, if it had workes. I use MidiQuest, by Sound Quest, which is a great product. I could never edit the D-70's patches with it however, as the D-70 would always lock up and give me a 'MIDI communication error' message. Strangely enough, I could edit performances though, that worked just fine. I had several calls to MidiQuest, and they explained to me that the D-70 was kind of 'bug laden', and that every ROM revision had it's own unique problems. They were pretty frank in saying that the market for a D-70 editor (I had the entire Midiquest package, which includes about 100 different synth editors) was pretty small, and that they were concentrating their efforts on supporting newer synths. They suggested that I might want to sell the D-70. The guy I sold it is very happy with it, but all he does it call up preset sounds and play it, I don't think he's even hooked a MIDI cable up to it." (Jay Storey, 1999)

I have uploaded some stuff about the Roland D-70:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... -m1sr33WcF

[my05]

Hi kiskadar69,

kudos for the explanation and the link to the service notes and the upgrade guide, much appreciated :)

I'm not really a deep-water diver in that sense. I'm more touching up presets (altering envelope, filter, eg and sometimes waveforms). When recording i tend to multitrack usually (this goes also for my other(a bit more modern) gear, including Yamaha MODX, etc. But i understand what you mean and the bugs in that regard are not nice at all :(

There is one thing that is bugging me:

While i have read about the various firmware revisions (1,00, 1.10, 1.14, 1.16 and 1.19) and that they are only supported given certain components being in place (cpu revision, resistor-array, etc) i got really confused by my own board.

I have the "revision 01" board with the metal cage surrounding the CPU. According to what is stated here: http://meteor-m.com/.../MAKING-ROLAND-D ... COMPATIBLE... (also one of the PDFs at your link)

"The HW is easily identifiable by a simple visual inspection of the main board. Otherwise the silkscreen (white) part number on the mainboard remains the same for both versions. Revision A has RA5 and RA6 resistor assemblies installed...
...Revision B has no RA5 and RA6 resistor assemblies installed
Also REV B board has no metallic cover/spring over the microprocessor IC, when REV A has (see two pictures above)."


If the above is true, then how come:
- i can run version 1.16 of the firmware?
- while running a revision 'A' firmware (as per the above) when i have the resistor array + metallic cpu casing in place?
- with the revision 01 system board

It does not really compute. Or I am really missing out on something here (i don't know).

[kiskadar69]

I don't know much about the Roland D-70 either. General good advice: if you don't have to, don't disassemble the D-70, because you might ruin it.