Long before drum machines played samples from an SD card or EPROM, drum sounds were analog – just filtered waveforms and noise. To the modern eye, these are very primitive machines, but for [Andrew], they’re the inspiration for this brilliant hack.
[Andrew] took a Roland CR-68 drum machine from 1978 and added MIDI input with the help of a PIC microcontroller. Not wanting to modify the look of the machine, [Andrew] programmed the PIC to watch the START/STOP button when the the unit is powered on. If the button is held down, the PIC enters it’s programming mode, where the sounds from the CR-68 can be mapped to an individual note on a MIDI controller. There’s no mention if the TRIGGER IN is queried by the PIC to modify the tempo of the preset patterns, but we assume that would be a relatively trivial implementation. Still, very impressive for a machine made 4 years before MIDI.
We love [Andrew]’s work, and we’re happy for any future owner that he documented how to use his device (and cleverly taped that to the bottom of the drum machine). It’s very nice to see old drum machines being used for more than doorstops after their samples have been recorded. Check out the video of [Andrew]’s walk through after the break.
