Is this possible? (Casio VL-1 sounchip)

Design Concepts
1

Hi everyone! I’m pretty new to this and have absolutely no experience in coding (my personal DIY synth experience is all in analogue electronics so far), but…

What I’m really looking for is a way to control the NEC D1867G soundchip via MIDI and a nicer way of programming it whilst in that state than the method built in.

I’ve got a Casio VL-1 (and another Casio with an identical chip) that could be used. What I was looking for was a MIDI-controlled (for pitch anyway) module to be made out of them, permanently rigged to be in the ‘ADSR’ programmable synth mode. Rather than the push-button interface on them at the moment, it could use rotary switches or encoders (whatever works) to control the synth programming; this is what I’d really want out of it, basically making them into a standalone digital oscillator much like you see the standalone rackmount filters. The second chip could possibly be used for layering another sound on top via a simple mixer.

What really inspired this was seeing a VL-1 that someone had assimilated with his analogue modular: http://web.media.mit.edu/~joep/pics/VLT-in-1CC.jpg

Please let me know if you think this (or something vaguely similar) would be possible with MIDIbox hardware and programming (I’m sure I could try hijacking a friend or two who can code!).

Many thanks,

  • Dan.
2

Welcome aboard, Gogledd :flowers:

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: Yes, pretty much anything is possible. You really wanna find some detailed info about it (datasheet, etc) or you’ll have quite a long reverse engineering session :wink:

3

Thanks!

I guess a better question would be ‘how do I go about this?’

I’ve contacted Casio direct about a datasheet a few weeks ago but didn’t get a response. It’s going to have to be a reverse engineering job, I think.

4

Any luck with getting something close to a data sheet or pinoutnor something on the NEC D1867G?