hi everyone! as folks who follow me elsewhere might know, i've had an obscure old MIDI module called the "Roland SC-7" for almost a year now, and i absolutely love it… but most of the sound demos of it on YouTube are really uninspiring :(

so i decided to fix that! here's a recording of 40 minutes of songs from my collection that i think make this thing shine. i hope you enjoy ^^

My FM TOWNS was locking up whenever something tried to access the MIDI board. I suspected a dodgy oscillator, and sure enough, hitting the clock chip on the Roland daughtercard with some hot air got it working again (at least for a bit until the chip cooled down and got stuck again). My Internet search skills are failing me at finding a decent replacement IC though—"6161A oscillator" doesn't seem to bring up any relevant hits, and neither Mouser nor Digikey seem to have a modern replacement with the same 0.57x0.18 inch (14.5x4.6 mm) four-pin form factor. On the off chance anyone else has run into this problem with their Roland gear and managed to fix it, I was wondering if you all recognized this chip or knew of a good replacement.

hi cohost, this might interest some of you! it's my newest project, a tool for creating and inspecting MIDI "System Exclusive" (SysEx) messages, targeting certain 90's General MIDI devices i personally own or have an interest in, currently Roland GS (SC-55 level) and Roland SC-7, and eventually maybe Yamaha XG. it's a web app, so unlike many other tools for these old pieces of technology, it is easy to use on a modern computer and is fully cross-platform. but it's not a cloud/SaaS thing, everything is happening client-side and you can download it if you want to (alas it's a bit fiddly to run because browsers are anal about security).

you can read more at https://github.com/hikari-no-yume/SoundPalette, try it out at http://hikari.noyu.me/etc/SoundPalette/, or watch a demo video at https://social.noyu.me/@hikari/statuses/01HFC9FYHFVSM9FWB5GBYDC5JT. thanks :3