Something a little different today, two retro music oddities from Yamaha.
The 1987 Yamaha SHS-10 (aka "Sholky") and the 1990 QY-10.
Two very different marketing directions (the 'rugged' leather for the QY-10 has a lot to say) but both can run on batteries and both have MIDI support. Combining them makes a surprisingly capable portable audio workstation for the price of a single cable and a quarter kilo of AAs.
Although the Sholky isn't part of the Portasound family it still uses the same OPL FM chip you might know from the SoundBlaster 16. The QY-10 is more of a 'rompler' and uses a bank of samples for each instrument. A really great example of how quickly tech moved in the '80s and '90s.
Unfortunately my Sholky only runs off a power adapter right now so I need to do some repairs to get it portable.
Repair pics under the cut.
First off, here it is in one piece.
I love how the text is facing in every direction, just a really fun design choice. As the keytarist you can read all the buttons but the audience gets a nice big logo to enjoy.
There's no conductivity between the battery terminal, even after cleaning off some battery goop with vinegar, so it needs to be opened up and checked closer.
Inside we have the main PCB. The big chip on the green side is a gate array, the sound generator is the second smallest chip on the beige side.
This is what it's all about, the Yamaha 2420. Apparently a variant of the 2413 aka OPLL. If you've ever enjoyed the classic FM MIDI sound of a SoundBlaster 16 this is the source. I've literally built an entire desktop computer just to control this single chip before but that's for a different post.
Close up on some of the other chips. We've got some Mitsubishi CMOS RAM (smallest chip), a Yamaha ROM, and a Yamaha CPU (largest chip). I couldn't find any info on the two Yamaha chips other than a fantastic circuit bending write up:
Many thanks to the author Christian Windler Oliver. Apparently also the "teachmaster" of Logologie, the first cyberage religion. The details are mostly in German but I'll need to explore that further...
In the meantime my Sholky runs on mains power so I know the issue is somewhere near the battery terminals. Testing conductivity pretty quickly reveals the terminals are the problem and now that they're out of the case I can see the corrosion was much worse than I thought.
Some sandpaper, more vinegar and alcohol and it's back in working order! Taking out the PCB ended up being pointless but at least I got to see the main sound chip.
Quick reassembly and here it is hooked up to the QY-10. Only three years apart but two very different aesthetics. Also, both were released before the General MIDI specification was published in 1991 so it was a nice surprise to find the Sholky's was already on the right channel to control the QY-10's lead instrument.
Looking for floppy disks meant pulling a bunch of things off shelves and in my house that meant a pile of retro tech. So I've dusted things off, taken some photos and written up posts. Those are queued for the next week or so but here's some extra bits and pieces for fun.
To start, my very first keyboard, a Yamaha Portasound PSS-170 I've had almost my whole life. These came out in 1986, there's a good chance my parents bought it on sale a few years later.
It's been heavily used by three feral children (myself and my sisters), dragged all around Australia for almost forty years, I even played it in at least one band. It has taken more abuse than just about any piece of technology I've seen and still works flawlessly. Beautiful.
Funnily enough, this keyboard does fit my retro home computing theme. It uses a cutdown version of the OPL2, the FM synthesis sound chip found in the Sound Blaster and Ad Lib sound cards.
Moving on, here's a weird calculator from 1977 with a VFD display. Its so chunky but I forgot to get a photo showing off how thick it is. Never found out much about this one, I just think it's pretty.
Last for now, a portable TV from the '80s that may be broken. Unfortunately there's no VHF or UHF broadcasts near me so I don't know it's faulty or there's just no signal to display. It scans but never stops. I originally got this to act as a mini screen for my Commodore 64 but haven't had any luck yet.
Yamaha Portasound: The amazing evolution of the PSS series
my bestie has a PSS-680 and it's pretty fun to play with. i gave it a run with the arturia beatstep pro (sequencer tracks) and i was surprised that so many of its voices could hold up even at 140+ bpm.
but alas, the drum spec is quite primitive and probably needs a midi sequencer that can change the instrument or some additional mapping on the beatstep to activate the pads.
/ conspicuous by your absence / edit / electric guitar / originally sequenced using a VSS-100 Portasound / early 1990s / transferred to Akai 4000DS at 7 ½ ips / played back at 3 ¾ ips / MXR Distortion + and Melos Analog Delay DE-1 / Ableton Live
