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I owned a V-4001 years ago and found it to be 100%, "games-compatible" with the MPU-401. Voyetra really would have needed to screw something up for it to be anything but, given the use of Roland's own chipset.

As they say the hardware is different.

There is no DIN SYNC output connector. Even if there was, do you have other MIDI gear with DIN SYNC input connector? I doubt any game would need or utilize it, and cannot know if the connector is missing.

There is no second MIDI output connector. If you connect to a single MIDI synthesizer, you don't need dual outputs, and even then you can use an external splitter or chain the synthesizer boxes. Only useful if you need two outputs, for example to different synthesizer modules that can be powered off if not needed. Games don't know how many output connectors there are (they output the same data).

There is no internal speaker for metronome. If you need to hear metronome ticks, connect the metronome output connector to some amp/speaker/whatever. Games would not see the speaker is missing, and would a game use the metronome tick for anything anyway (ok, they could use it for something and then you would hear it only through the connector).

Cloudschatze wrote:

I owned a V-4001 years ago and found it to be 100%, "games-compatible" with the MPU-401. Voyetra really would have needed to screw something up for it to be anything but, given the use of Roland's own chipset.

Yes it seems to be, it passed the 'Gateway' test anyway.

Voyetra shaved a few cents off the production costs by not providing any jumpers for IRQ and port number, which is a shame, but I like the compact external input/output module.

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Do we have any idea what the roland chipset actually is?
Are it's chips rebranded commonly available ones or are they completely custom?
That 40pin IC could be a Z8 coupled with some SRAM (the MOSTEK chip) and the firmware (on that smd roland chip near the connector) , much like the Music Quest card...

keropi wrote:

Do we have any idea what the roland chipset actually is?
Are it's chips rebranded commonly available ones or are they completely custom?
That 40pin IC could be a Z8 coupled with some SRAM (the MOSTEK chip) and the firmware (on that smd roland chip near the connector) , much like the Music Quest card...

The Roland MPU-401 "chipset" basically consists of a microcontroller, in this case a Hitachi HD6801A74 or HD6801VOB55P, a Roland/Hitachi Bus Interface Unit, the HD61J22F, an 6116 8KB S-RAM chip and some glue logic. If the HD6801A74 is used, there will also be an 8KB ROM or EPROM, which is embedded in the HD6801VOB55P. The glue logic will always contain an opto-isolator for the MIDI IN. The chipset is fairly generic except for the ROM code, but the parts are not easy to find these days.

^ ah , thanks for that...
so chances are that Music Quest just ported the code to the Z8 (and MidiMan to a Siemens MCU IIRC or maybe all 3 are compatible with each other and they just licensed the rom code) so they could manufacture cards without Roland's chips...

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I have a V-4000 which is very similar but without support for FSK sync. I've imaged the floppies that came with it.

voy_vapi.ima - VAPI Drivers disk ver. 1.35
voy_spg1.ima - Sequencer Plus Gold Demo version 4.09 Disk #1: Sequencer/install
voy_spg2.ima - Sequencer Plus Gold Demo Sequencer Disk #2 4.09

These are 360k disk images.
Feel free to put these on vogonsdrivers (I don't have a login).

Does anyone know the difference between a V-4001 and a OP-4001?

dacow wrote:

Does anyone know the difference between a V-4001 and a OP-4001?

pretty sure the difference is mostly to do with sync + expansion options (for more midi outputs)

how come i cant seem to edit my messages anymore? was there a change in vogons forum policy?

chrisNova777 wrote:

how come i cant seem to edit my messages anymore? was there a change in vogons forum policy?

It's only temporary, someone went a bit crazy and we're still cleaning up: Suddenly can't edit posts anymore?