Roland MT-200 Pt1: Power Repair

[@TechTangents]

I've done some more testing. The FZ-357 drive in it isn't just set to DS0. There is some other way it is configured that makes it unusual. I tried several different brand drives jumped to DS0 and none of them worked. I tried doing an Amiga mod on a Sony MPF920 Z/121 and that didn't work either. Although the Amiga modded drive is closer than the others. It is able to detect the disk with the mod, but it never gets to either reading it or saying it's improper. Also, I had two problems in editing this video: 1. I used the stereo mics in the flashbacks and in the shot where I was holding the floppy drive and it doesn't sound good. I now have a lapel mic that I'm going to setup to be always recording as a fallback. So this should be fixed in the future. 2. I misspelled "too". It takes about 3-4hrs to go from clicking the render button to the video being uploaded. I don't want to waste that time to add one more "o"

[@UnreasonableSteve]

Re: #2, I'm interested in your edit/rendering process and settings, have you thought about doing a video about your recording and production setup? (Or, have you done one and I've just missed it)

[@TechTangents]

I am getting really close to doing a video on that. I switched from using Blender to Davinci Resolve as my editor a while ago and about a month ago switched to a BMPCC4K camera which is a huge departure from my Nikon D5300. My Editing PC is in it's final config now with 2xE5-2690s, 64GB RAM, and a 1080ti but the high bitrate 4k footage takes a lot of power to work with. For this video I also used Resolve's noise reduction for the first time which is very intense in the render making it take about 4x as long. But the result is much better. There are a lot of reasons it takes a long time to render, I'll go into the more technical details in the eventual video. The gist is, I'm using a very high quality workflow so it isn't easy. Also, I'm doing everything on Linux. So I'm sort of forging my own path.

[@faderax]

Around 8:16 the camera seems to glitch out for a couple of seconds.

[@dglcomputers1498]

As an s330 owner, yes Roland did use specific floppy drives and you either need the specific chinon model as is fitted and ask roland for the jumper settings or buy a modded drive which is what I did (although it now has a faulty floppy cable which is soldered in, and the OS is on fdd so no drive=no one home), i think the other thing it needs is a drive ready signal (pin 30?) but naturally PC drives are generally designed as cheap possible so omit unneeded extra features. There is also a Toshiba drive that would work (as fitted to the s330) but I'm unsure of the model.

[@Stoney3K]

Have you tried digging around for another FZ-357 and swap out the controller? That head really smells like it's dead and buried.

[@Stjaernljus]

The drive select problem can be fixed with a floppy cable with a twist in it(not the regular pc floppy twist) by swapping driveselect 1 and 0. Also most pc floppy drives can be modded to shugart.

[@TechTangents]

I remember something about some drives having pads on them for drive select. I'll have to look at the ones I've got and see if I can make that work on any of them. If not, somewhere I have a length of 34 conductor cable and some connectors. I can try making an adapter cable to give doing in the unmodified way a shot.

[@TechTangents]

I've done some more testing. The FZ-357 drive in it isn't just set to DS0. There is some other way it is configured that makes it unusual. I tried several different brand drives jumped to DS0 and none of them worked. I tried doing an Amiga mod on a Sony MPF920 Z/121 and that didn't work either. Although the Amiga modded drive is closer than the others. It is able to detect the disk with the mod, but it never gets to either reading it or saying it's improper.

[@zgbapl]

@@TechTangents Both in my Amiga 600 and SD35 I have FZ354s (the only difference between 354s and 357s is that the latter ones support HD floppies, but _only_ if the JP2 jumper on the board is shorted, apart from that they should be identical). Jumpers in both ones are set to DS0, MM, RDY, but in the Roland one the TTL/C-MOS jumper is not present. Maybe that's the difference? I think that the most PC drives use TTL levels, so if your module requires CMOS levels, that might be the problem.

[@MontieMongoose]

I loved how you picked Doom music to test this right off the bat.

[@smallmoneysalvia]

Are you talking about the spoiler video? Because that was the duke nukem theme. The only doom music I heard was on the yamaha in the beginning. Essentially what I’m saying is what this played was NEDM.

[@MontieMongoose]

@@smallmoneysalvia no. I was talking about the doom song he played in the beginning from floppy disk. Obviously he played the duke3d song near the end. It says Duke Nukem 3d right on the setup screen.

[@heyyitsultima]

@@MontieMongoose But he didn't test Doom music on this device. It was on the Yamaha that he demoed it.

[@awesomeferret]

"I want the floppy disk experience". My dude, this *_IS_* the floppy disk experience.

[@billmoran5957]

We really take for-granted now that Everything Just Works. Imagine having to Abort Retry Fail SD cards constantly lol

[@helenloughman90]

Improper disk doesn’t necessarily mean that. You can get rid of the message by pressing the Stop button, and usually everything proceeds as normal. I’ve had my MT 200 since 1999 and I still use it to create tracks. I’ve recently started having problems with the transformer and have just sent away for a Roland replacement which I hope will take care of the problem. I have my fingers crossed that it’s not the power supply internally.

[@SpeedySPCFan]

From what I understand, Roland used center negative for their PSUs because that's what their BOSS effects pedal use, and everyone started using center negative for their pedals as well since they wanted to capture Roland's market and audience. So the whole 'center negative' thing stuck with the company for the rest of their life it seems.

[@spokehedz]

I have no idea about audio equipment, but I do know that center negative was definitely a thing back in older electronics. And there might have just been 'standard' parts that were designed around a center negative...

[@sysghost]

Just a tiny correction: Floppy disks usually use the FAT12 format, while FAT16 was used for hard drives with MS-DOS 3.0 or later. FAT16 was created in order to support the newer much larger 20 megabyte hard drives, which FAT12 couldn't utilize to various limitations.

[@Rodville]

There! I've now watched all of your videos at least once. Some more than once. You make awesome videos! Please keep up the great work!

[@alphabeets]

Clean the heads on the floppy drive. Also you need to make sure the floppy is correctly formatted for that drive. You can’t just assume it is compatible. Also you need to resolder the 1/4” Jack.

[@TroyKucks]

Happy New Year to you Shelby - Hope you have a great 2019 - ps - as an Australian I approve of AC/DC at the end of the video too :)

[@hi-friaudioman]

It looks like one of those bodges are soldered to that via! Is there a jumper on rhe board for drive select? Can you get the schematic from roland or find it online? Ps-i bet you can crack open a generic floppy drive and short out an internal pad or something to get to drive select 0.

[@zgbapl]

I have a Roland SD35 which is pretty similar to your model. It's very unreliable with basically every floppy I got, but it works fine with my HxC gotek. Google for "pc to amiga floppy mod", it's what you need to mod your ordinary PC drive to work here. But your mileage may vary - I was experimenting with some modded drives and the ROland module was still picky as hell... It's standard DOS FAT format BTW.

[@rarbiart]

i tend to look at the power rails if something is strange. How do the 5V, the 12V etc look like?BTW: Who said that this device uses Standard DOS-FAT disks?

[@IvoryTowerCollections]

You need to update the firmware in it to ver 2.0 or 2.01 to prevent hanging note issues that the ver 1x is known to do. I've got one that I use as a sound canvas device for all older games. And yes they are compatible with both 720k and high density 1.44mb disks. At least mine is or was until I put a Gotek in it about a year ago.

[@The_Laser_Channel]

Love that AC/DC "Thunderstruck" MIDI at the end

[@Monsebrak]

I felt in love with you Casio CQ1 video so immediately I subscribe, your channel it's so good !! Greetings from Mexico :D

[@JacGoudsmit]

5:23 At the risk of being redundant: You're going to have to resolder the pad on that 1/4" jack next to the power connector too (and possibly many more if this is representative of the quality of soldering on that board).

[@1Soniccool]

Roland did some amazing stuff with the MT 32 and SC-55 and 88. Roland also does the TR-809 and 909 drum machine.

[@elektro-peter1954]

9V Center negative is pretty standard with electronic instruments and effects by the way. For example all the guitar effect pedals I have sen have this. Keyboards also seem to have center negative barrel jacks most of the time, although they not always use 9V. 12V is also very common there. Also, the ripped barral jacks are the total classic repair job with musical equipment. I must have done a hundred of them or so. Seems to be due to the rough handling such equipment receives often on stages and when the equipment gets set up and torn down a lot.

[@GabrielZ666]

Hi AkBKukU! I recently acquired a Roland SoundBrush SB-55 paired with a SoundCanvas SC-88, the SC-88 works flawlessly but the SB-55 gives me an "hEr" error, someday I'll try to repair it, I also want to try the floppy midi experience!!! And for the floppy drive, I think I read somewhere that some Epson SMD-300 do have jumpers for DS0 settings and they are used for replacement on a wide range of devices, presumably the SB-55 wich uses DD floppies. Even though I don't know if they can be used on your MT-200. Sorry for my bad english, love your channel!

[@Berkner80]

Working with my MT-200. Is the a way to use the sounds from a sound module instead of the internal sounds playing back a sequence? I can't seem to get mine to work.

[@Techdisk42]

I think I actually have that exact model of floppy drive hanging around. I'll check. Only thing is that it has a white faceplate instead of black. But it should work.

[@Berkner80]

My disk drive is doing the same except it will go through the full format and then shows that it fails. I also used many different disks, same failure. Tried cleaning it but still get failure. I wanted to use the floppy also like you but I do have a GoTec coming in so I guess I will install it when it come in.

[@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365]

Great choice of song for the spoiler demo ;-)

[@enilenis]

Recently serviced an SD-35 also with a ripped power socket like in your video. The owner ended up cutting the barrel jack off, drilling a hole in the case and soldering the write to the plug, which I still can't figure out. If they went through all that effort and were able to solder, why not just solder the socket back the way it was, which is what I ended up doing.

[@Billsingsong]

Is this a combination sound canvas/Sound brush?

[@hi-friaudioman]

Im sure you can find new drive heads out there and if its not the heads you could have a problem with an amplifier circuit or something. I would get a signal probe and probe out from a working drive, the bad drive and isolate the difference.

[@izools]

@AkBKukU just a heads up that both DD and HD diskettes in the 3.5" format are 80 tracks, the difference is in the numbers of sectors per track. Only 5.25" DD diskettes are 40 tracks, hence they're half the capacity of a 3. 5" DD diskette 😉

[@LaskyLabs]

Ohh... I love the SC-55. Looks like fun, I'm jealous.

[@eduardoavila646]

Really cool! It's a shame that there aren't any cheap clones of those.

[@johnuser5162]

I know you said that you wanted a floppy drive, but cant you get a 3.5" bay card reader, and rig a floppy to IDE adapter cable?

[@Billsingsong]

How does this compare to the Roland SD 35 floppy disk midi player?

[@TotemSP2]

I have the MT-100, which is an MT-32 Mk.II instead of a GS synth. It also uses non standard floppy disks... not a file format, a slightly different, slightly smaller floppy disk.

[@SpeedySPCFan]

You mean Quick-Disk? That became a pretty popular format in the music world, Roland embraced it wholeheartedly with a lot of their products (like the D-20 workstation) before 3.5in took over.

[@helloimash]

The Thunderstruck MIDI at the end was really good. How would I go about getting the whole thing? (Ideally without buying an MT200).

[@1337Shockwav3]

No idea if this is resolved in the video but most 3.5 drives still have solder jumpers for DS0/DS1 ... ready/diskchange or density select usually is a bigger issue. Also ... FAT12, not FAT16 for floppies.

[@mstandish]

Aren't floppy disks FAT12? Will they work if you format them with FAT16 too?

[@allrock1238]

Is the Roland floppy disk format non-standard

[@helenloughman90]

Also, don’t forget that the floppy disk has to be initialized first in the MT 200 before it can be recognized.

[@Berkner80]

Would like more detail on how to hookup drive to test without connecting up everything back up?

[@ericclone]

Hey, what is the screwdriver you are using?

[@H4zuZazu]

The black stuff on the DC Jack, is just Silveroxide and that is Conductive unlike Copperoxide wich is barely conductive.

[@SenileOtaku]

Does that play just single-track MIDI files? Would be interested to hear how it handles multi-track files (yeah, have an interesting 8-track file I tried out for my daughter's Casio keyboard, I doubt your viewers want to hear something from an Anime series though).

[@plushifoxed]

big fan of the dreamy cloud filter over the flashback

[@Di3mondDud3]

Yay! We got to hear it, thats so awesome!

[@SeraphinaPZ]

The trace cuts look like someone just took a chisel to the board. Interesting technique of cutting traces there.

[@yorgle]

I'd also swap out that battery the next time you're in there. Move it off board too just in case it explodes or leaks like it eventually will. ;) I have a Roland MT-90S at my workbench, and it's great for playing floppies of midi files. I can send you some floppies loaded if ya like. :) (it also looks like the display interface is the same as the MT90S. The 90 just doesn't save/record/format sadly. :/

[@EdwinNoorlander]

So cool. I think Roland use a just slightly different floppy format. But cool. I want one.

[@stanleymcfallsthesouthernc4104]

I think that was my unit the Yamaha I scratch my name in the back of it wow

[@C2H5OHist]

I'll just leave a comment so I will be reminded if this is true. Awesome!

[@Ice_Karma]

I don't know anything useful about the drive ID situation, but I'd like to mention one reason most PC floppy drives are unlikely to work: The Roland unit appears to require a drive that can detect when a floppy disk has been inserted. While the PC floppy interface supports this, it seems most if not all drives intended for PCs do not... and even if they did, there's apparently no agreement over whether the signal is active-high or active-low. (Things could be worse, though: You _could_ need a floppy drive with a disk ejection motor!)

[@BilisNegra]

You're getting the kind of close-ups in video that one could only dream of in still photography. What kind of gear are you using?

[@TechTangents]

I'm shooting with a BMPCC4K using an MF3 to Nikon G Series adapter. For my macro shots I almost always use a Zoom-NIKKOR 35~70mm 1:3.5~4.8 with a reversing ring. I full manual everything when I shoot. So I take my time to setup each shot so it looks exactly how I want.

[@CaptainRaveman]

Drive select hacks can be done, I have done so for amiga as it require drive 0 as well

[@orinokonx01]

Me likey! Got a SC-55mkII here, but this thing is just so odd and unique, I want one so bad haha

[@DouglasWalrath]

i wonder if someone could use some of the chips from the gotek to adapt a normal floppy drive to appear as drive 0

[@electronash]

Most floppy drives can be modded to appear as drive 0 anyway, either on the PCB, or with a simple twist in the cable. ;) The Gotek doesn't have any app-specific chips in it for handling that, just a few simple buffers. Everything else on the Gotek is handled by an STM32 (ARM based) MCU. A floppy drive just has signals on like DS0 / DS1, and MOTA / MOTB. The floppy interface just drives those signals Low to select the drive and enable the spindle motor. (most signals on a floppy drive are normally pulled High by resistors, hence they are known as Active-Low.) The twist in the cable on PCs basically just swaps those signals.

[@DouglasWalrath]

so he should be able to use a normal drive if he gets a cable with a twist in it

[@electronash]

@@DouglasWalrath I think so, yep. Some drives in synths and keyboards are custom, but this looks like a fairly standard drive. It's worth checking the PCB itself on some "PC" style drives, as some have solder pads or wire links to force them to DS0. But yeah, I reckon a twist cable would work fine in this. The original drive might be just slightly out of alignment, or the heads are a bit worn. Alignment is fairly easy to do with a known good disk (with some data on), and an oscilloscope. It usually involves rotating the stepper motor very slightly (by loosening some screws), then making sure the heads are dead-on the track. Probably not worth the effort though. Just use a new PC drive with a twist cable, or find one that does have a DS0 jumper. Could probably use a drive from an Atari ST or another synth. Not an Amiga drive, though, as they are slightly different.

[@arioch2004]

Might be that the drive has a head alignment problem. Which is generally a pain to resolve.

[@utzufideli9769]

You can modify a floppy cable to use a standard floppy drive as drive 0!

[@IvanStepaniuk]

I bet the heads are misaligned. It happened all the time with cheap floppy drives, even with just over tightening the chasis mounting screws.

[@akkudakkupl]

Maybe the head assembly is misaligned? That might explain why it can format and then read it's own disks?

[@_JStefanelli]

You Probably already know this, but 1.44MB floppies should be FAT12...

[@TechTangents]

That sounds more correct. It just didn't come to me off the top of my head and I didn't think to double check it in editing.

[@mycosys]

Was gonna say this too lol.

[@andrewcosten]

Sounds great.....the last song was that Thunder struck

[@rinsatomi9527]

AkBKukU, I recall having to cover the small hole to the side of the diskette with tape in order to simulate SS (single-sided) mode on this really old Yamaha keyboard I once used. Though it may not have been your problem since apparently you got it to work, maybe you could try this and see if it makes your life any easier. Cheers!

[@kuro68000]

Some Panasonic and Samsung drives can be modified to drive 0 by soldering jumpers on the PCB.

[@AdamChristensen]

16:56 Nununuahnununahnuah.... THUNDER!

[@supra107]

*sip* Yep, Quake 3 was a good game.

[@notartyom8915]

In my experience a drive that cant read any disk but its own usually ends up being way out of alignment. I have never had alignment issues with a 3.5" drive however... Bad heads are definitely a possibility

[@joeltyler3427]

~~Dude, look at the volume nob at 2:39 It moves.~~ My bad you moved it.

[@Madness832]

When I saw the thumbnail, I thought it looked like a police scanner!

[@tinfoil_hatsociety4866]

wouldn't a amiga or a c64 disk drive that is modified to run on a pc be able to work on that. Since if i remember they had that option to be drive 0.

[@jiddro33]

You should try getting your hands on a Roland MT-80S or MT-90S. :-)

[@silicongraphics]

These aren’t synthesizers, they’re ROMplers aka samplers. They aren’t actually generating any audio waveforms or doing any kind of modulation or filtering. All they do is play back audio file samples and change the pitch.

[@TechTangents]

That's a good thing to point out, I did forget about that distinction. I'll bring that up in the next video and demo it next to an actual synthesizer.

[@naturesinterface6663]

It's perfectly cromulent to call these synthesizers. They are romplers, but were often called tone modules or sound modules. The word "sampler" is pretty strongly married to a device (or a plugin) which is primarily designed for the user to easily sample audio sources and play them back musically. A rompler plays back samples, but it is not a sampler. (These distinctions are blurred when considering the pricier workstation synths which consolidated sampler, rompler, sequencer, and multiple types of synthesizer functions.) "Generating audio waveforms" is the same as "play(ing) back audio file samples." (cf. wavetable synthesis). "Changing pitch" is a "kind of modulation." Changing amplitude is a kind of modulation, also, which is essential for amplitude envelopes. There are lots of types of musical audio synthesis, so it can be confusing. Part of that is due to patents, where manufacturers tweak their designs to not infringe but achieve similar functionality. (cf. Yamaha's FM synthesis). Anyway, these are terms of art, so meaning can vary by time, place, dialect, and register. My first sampler was the Roland S-550.

[@silicongraphics]

naturesinterface You do have a good point, but it really isn’t fair to call romplers (which are just samplers, except the sounds are stored in non changeable ROM) and aren’t really generating sounds, simply repeating them, say for example like a CD player “reproduces” sound, not synthesizing anything, of that makes sense

[@tuncgurses]

Sony Ericsson T610 beats all the midi devices. It has insane midi output. The memories.

[@ThomasCaraccio]

you may find that an amiga or Atari floppy drive would be able to replace that drive

[@branchonequal]

All my life I thought that GS stands for General Synth... oh well... I was going to write that maybe the disk drive heads are out of alignment (as the drive could read floppies which it formatted) but then you normally shouldn't be able to read them in another drive. Maybe this information is still useful to you. ;)

[@Ramsis-SNES]

Jeez, I wonder what the former owner did to that power supply jack to completely break all its solder pads like that? :o

[@Vlad-1986]

Floppy drives are really annoying. I have two old laptops. They won't recognise an ide to card, the floppies are dead. No spares. No way to connect serial to any modern computer, no infrared working... and Any scrap floppy drives I tried wouldn't work. Plus "modern" floppies are really unreliable, so even when I deal with real hardware, I never know if an error is the drive or the floppy fault

[@patisonyosh3723]

It's so sad that he has only 40k subs

[@dude22072]

GS existed long before General MIDI. Calling it an extension to General MIDI is backwards. The MT-32 and the original SoundCanvas SC-55 only had the GS logos on them.

[@cromulence]

No. Just no.

[@Hiraghm]

would be cool if you could put a Gotek USB floppy emulator in it. edit: lol I should wait before commenting...

[@succuvamp_anna]

I wonder if it could handle "Black Midi", would be a spectacular failure lol Nice video as always!!!!!

[@IvoryTowerCollections]

I know this is nearly a necro reply, but these devices are only capable of 24 or 28 voice polyphony depending on the firmware and year it was made. A black midi file would likely lock up the unit or cause it to generate an error of some sort. It is also limited on the temp in that they won't go above 250bpm. Midi files with faster tempo will play at the max 250 speed on these.

[@succuvamp_anna]

@@IvoryTowerCollections no, thanks for the update, I'm glad to have an update to this!

[@nFiveTech]

I looked up the price of the FZ-357. $80. What the actual hell.

[@eletronica1857]

nice video, but you done a shit job at power suply conector... would enough teke off the green ink that coverd copper trail and fill soldering in the place... not those shit wires melted with soldering iron heat

[@AnonyDave]

Damn, bodge with a jackhammer!

[@JonProietti]

Anyone else notice it flashes red on beat 4? Think it'd be beat 1...

[@philipcooper8297]

Groovy.

[@IcicleFurry]

AWESOME!!!

[@arge7661]

sweet sweet MIDI ACDC

[@ByteDelight]

Just twist pins 10-12 to connect a PC drive as drive DS0, like described here: www.bytedelight.com/?p=1418

[@chloedevereaux1801]

gotta be a roland format disc

[@PicaDelphon]

I stick with my Classic Roland MT-32

[@SpeedySPCFan]

The MT-32 is a totally different kind of synth so the comparison doesn't really fit... the MT-32 is more of a typical synth, and the MT-200 is more akin to a Sound Canvas - based on a locked down sampling architecture and adheres to GM/GS standards. I don't know why they chose the MT naming scheme for this device, but I don't think Roland has ever been particularly good at following their own names. They used this same set of sounds in the Roland XP-10, which is NOT based on the JV-1080 like the other XP keyboards are.

[@stonent]

I think technically they use FAT12.

[@Ice_Karma]

FAT12 on floppies.

[@sotris99]

DF0 !!! You need a chinon amiga 500 floppy disk drive

[@mushroomsamba82]

wow you can really tell they didn't intend on making very many of these based on the hamfisted "mods" they did from the factory lol

[@MatroxMillennium]

Sounds like you just had shit luck with the floppy drives you have on hand... I think about 50% of my 3.5" floppy drives have the selection jumper.

[@MakarovFox]

thunder!!!

[@jack8407]

hmm... dejavu... it seems i watched this earlier

[@jack8407]

oh yep i watched this... thanks youtube for making me watch this again

[@dant5464]

You may have already seen it, but Techmoan did a video about the Roland MT-80S around a year ago. A similar device but in the form of a small boombox. watch?v=Lc0SGBOq0tw

[@Billsingsong]

Roland sd35

[@zzewt]

Oh, the humanity Please don't use these horrible slow blurs. It hurts my eyes so much I actually have to look away until it's stopped. It's painful for anyone with imperfect vision. (insert gaussian convolution matrix with a big ghostbusters X over it)

[@alphabeets]

Oh no, another talking hand video.

[@AnOfficialAndrewFloyd]

*too many

[@bjornensvensson2644]

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