TR-626 ROM Hacking Tool

A while ago I saw a page on burnkit2600 which described various circuit bends for the Roland TR-626 Rhythm Composer. One comment said that no-one had ever managed to crack the format of the sound ROM. Well, never one to shrink from a challenge, I took my 626 apart and desoldered the ROM, then read it with my EPROM programmer and set about decoding the odd addressing layout.

At some stage I managed to break the 626, due to a stray little clipping of wire. It seems the big ASICs that handle sound addressing are terribly sensitive. I'm planning on getting another, and will definitely be modding it with a ZIF socket on top for replacement sound ROMs.

The two attached files are the tool for decoding the ROM (from which I'm sure someone can derive a nice bit of code to assemble up new ROMs from WAV files) and my modified ROM. Note that the ROM is really suitable for a 128kB ROM, rather than the 256kB ROM fitted to the 626. This is because I only had a 28F1001 Flash ROM to hand.

Please email me if you have any questions.