What does an engineer do to a perfectly working bit of gear…. Let’s mod it!.
Now the fun will begin. The keyboard has a port for a data cartridge, this cartridge which holds program patches can either be a fixed ROM version or a RAM version with onboard battery backup. Both of these types are obsolete and expensive on the second hand market. It is time to build a ‘Mega- Ram’ version with at least 1 meg of RAM and bank switching facilities. Or even an SD card version.
I need to get hold of an old data cartridge as the connector looks to be non standard. Although I have the schematic for the D50, I do not have the schematic for the cartridges. It can’t be too difficult though, 16 address lines, 8 data lines and a few control lines.
I have not used an SD card when its not being used in a multimedia product environment. So a copy of the protocol would be handy.
In the meantime here is a copy of the service notes and an extract of the section in question