giulio wrote on Today, 02:28:

For the SC-88/88pro, dumping the socketed eprom is enough

thanks, actually AFAIT, reading an old thread in this forum:

About Roland Virtual Sound Canvas 3

it seems SC-88 Wave ROMs were released even here and in that thread also the de-scrambling sequence was found. does, the 88Emu need scrambled or de-scrambled dumps?

also, in that same old thread here:

About Roland Virtual Sound Canvas 3

combining with the few documented information here:

https://github.com/dsp56300/gearmulator/blob/ … .md#rom-loading

it seems some (or the same?) Wave binaries are found in the "SCCore.dll". anyway, as a newbie, I still think a little better documentation on that part is needed. I have SC-88 and SC-88Pro - I guess I will dump all I can from their PCB and try to build myself some "map" what is what.

giulio wrote on Today, 02:28:

For the SC-8820 and SC-8850 you will need to load a firmware upgrade that dumps the internal roms and the wave rom. It works only though on early units that don't use mask rom. For the late ones without the updater you'll probably need to do some microsoldering.

as far as I imagine it such approach uses some kind of Trojan-FW that makes the dump possible and I presume that Trojan-FW is not publicly available. so, I guess, that's out of questions. I have 2x (or 3x, don't remember exactly) 8820 units, need to check my storage room - at the moment cannot tell if anyone of them is using not masked-rom version of the mcu or not. I also have 1x SC-D70...

ok, kind of got it running with SC-88, just to answer to some of my own questions that I was not able initially to deduct from what I read:

Wave binaries are fine scrambled, it seems Control ROM v1.01 is supported, but V1.02 is not recognized/supported.

also, the Control you can dump from the device you own with chip programmer, the Waves you can dump using the following tool:

https://github.com/shingo45endo/sc-mcu-wave-romdumper

so, it's not that hard when you know it, but I didn't know it.

giulio wrote on 2026-09-22, 02:47:

I attached this time the work we did on the CM-32P reverb chip, where I spent multiple weeks of my life tracing every single wire and annotating every single standard cell type manually to get their logic functions out.

totally off-topic, but please, could you look at the following new IC decap:

Roland MPU 401 Decap

and please tell us there your opinion as someone apparently very experienced - is it good enough for reversing? what tool you used for the tracing?

Would this be able to run on a RPi compute module 4 (CM4 Lite), making it possible to be used on a real hardware via the wavetable WP32 McCake, or is the CM4 Lite too slow?

Shiftyy wrote on Today, 04:27:

Would this be able to run on a RPi compute module 4 (CM4 Lite), making it possible to be used on a real hardware via the wavetable WP32 McCake, or is the CM4 Lite too slow?

(mostly) What you are looking for is here:

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=7858&start=30

Not tested by me.

giulio wrote on Today, 02:28:

For the SC-88/88pro, dumping the socketed eprom is enough
For the SC-8820 and SC-8850 you will need to load a firmware upgrade that dumps the internal roms and the wave rom. It works only though on early units that don't use mask rom. For the late ones without the updater you'll probably need to do some microsoldering.

Closest you can get is a post on the issues tracker for Nuked-SC55.

I "documented" my own dumping of the Roland SCC-1A.

The dumping of scc-1A / You can make a differens / Farwell.

You find a link to the relevant issue post there.

Karmeck wrote on Today, 06:56:

I "documented" my own dumping of the Roland SCC-1A.

The dumping of scc-1A / You can make a differens / Farwell.

You find a link to the relevant issue post there.

thank you, interesting information! so, I own SC-88 and SC-88Pro and for them the unaffiliated project:

https://shingo45endo.github.io/sc-mcu-wave-romdumper/

is sufficient to backup your legally owned Roland hardware - it still requires to open the device, pull out the Control ROM chip and patch it using external chip programmer, but that is totally OK and I see nothing questionable about it. What I don't fully get through is why the Authors of 88Emu did not document that and create additional hurdles for newbies such way. especially when the documented:

https://shingo45endo.github.io/sc55mk2-ctf-patcher/
https://github.com/shingo45endo/sc55mk2-ctf-patcher

about 10 lines above the following line:

https://github.com/dsp56300/gearmulator/blob/ … d-midi-playback

in their documentation, but somehow documenting:

https://shingo45endo.github.io/sc-mcu-wave-romdumper/
https://github.com/shingo45endo/sc-mcu-wave-romdumper

is not OK to be put in the documentation. anyway, I guess it's their decision, but at least I don't see the motivation behind it.

costa wrote on Today, 02:50:

as far as I imagine it such approach uses some kind of Trojan-FW that makes the dump possible and I presume that Trojan-FW is not publicly available. so, I guess, that's out of questions. I have 2x (or 3x, don't remember exactly) 8820 units, need to check my storage room - at the moment cannot tell if anyone of them is using not masked-rom version of the mcu or not. I also have 1x SC-D70...

I can provide modified firmware that allows for dumping the MCU firmware; however, I cannot release it publicly. If you need it, please send me a private message specifying which firmware you require, along with your contact information, so that I can send the modified file to you.
By the way, I've already dumped the MCU firmware for the SC-8820. I haven't started working on the firmware for the SC-D70 yet, because my SC-D70 is broken 🙁

mckuhei wrote on Today, 13:36:

costa wrote on Today, 02:50:

as far as I imagine it such approach uses some kind of Trojan-FW that makes the dump possible and I presume that Trojan-FW is not publicly available. so, I guess, that's out of questions. I have 2x (or 3x, don't remember exactly) 8820 units, need to check my storage room - at the moment cannot tell if anyone of them is using not masked-rom version of the mcu or not. I also have 1x SC-D70...

I can provide modified firmware that allows for dumping the MCU firmware; however, I cannot release it publicly. If you need it, please send me a private message specifying which firmware you require, along with your contact information, so that I can send the modified file to you.
By the way, I've already dumped the MCU firmware for the SC-8820. I haven't started working on the firmware for the SC-D70 yet, because my SC-D70 is broken 🙁

The dumping firmware is public on github, found in the issue post I link to. Posted by the grate nukeykt them self.

mckuhei wrote on Today, 13:36:

I can provide modified firmware that allows for dumping the MCU firmware; however, I cannot release it publicly. If you need it, please send me a private message specifying which firmware you require, along with your contact information, so that I can send the modified file to you. By the way, I've already dumped the MCU firmware for the SC-8820.

I probably will contact you privately, but see my comment about SC-D70, because the same applies for my SC-8820 units as well. so, for the time being it's more important information to me that the MCU rom of SC-8820 can be dumped and it was dumped. I remember in past looking in the Service Manual of SC-8820 that the Wave Flash chip was kind of weird to dump - they used TSOP variant with pins mirrored compared to usual TSOP Flash chip - but maybe I recall wrongly....

mckuhei wrote on Today, 13:36:

I haven't started working on the firmware for the SC-D70 yet, because my SC-D70 is broken 🙁

I have SC-D70, but it's somewhere buried in my storage room - I haven't seen it for years. however, if it helps the project, I can start digging to get it out - it was working last time I tried it. so, let me know - it will be a lot of effort to find it and it will certainly take some time, but maybe it's faster solution than fixing a broken unit. I also have collection of chip programmer - if anything is needed to be read that way in hardware and I can solder/desolder.

Karmeck wrote on Today, 13:43:

The dumping firmware is public on github, found in the issue post I link to. Posted by the grate nukeykt them self.

you mean for SC-8820 or for SC-55, because what you're saying I can find there for SC-55 only?

Karmeck wrote on Today, 06:52:

(mostly) What you are looking for is here: […]
Show full quote

Shiftyy wrote on Today, 04:27:

Would this be able to run on a RPi compute module 4 (CM4 Lite), making it possible to be used on a real hardware via the wavetable WP32 McCake, or is the CM4 Lite too slow?

(mostly) What you are looking for is here:

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=7858&start=30

Not tested by me.

Damn, an optimized Nuked-SC55 AND Munt/Nuked-MT32 for the CM4? That's exactly what I was looking for haha. Thanks, will try it out soon.

@costa

> but V1.02 is not recognized/supported

If you can provide the dump or a hash I can add support

giulio wrote on Today, 15:11:

@costa

> but V1.02 is not recognized/supported

If you can provide the dump or a hash I can add support

thanks! MD5: cd72a33ca10295740bc924fdef52ab00

BTW, it seems there is public dump as well, when do search for "Roland SC-88 Control ROM v1.0.2" in Google.

costa wrote on Today, 13:53:

Karmeck wrote on Today, 13:43:

The dumping firmware is public on github, found in the issue post I link to. Posted by the grate nukeykt them self.

you mean for SC-8820 or for SC-55, because what you're saying I can find there for SC-55 only?

So what I did was move the mcu (read: paid someone) from the SCC-1A into a Roland SC-55, mostly because I did not know how to power the sound card but also, how to use the control rom to dump try mcu if there are no slot for it.

Now, like I said in that thread, I know nothing really. But I guess the firmware to dump the sc-55 would also work for the sc-8820.

Karmeck wrote on 31 minutes ago:

But I guess the firmware to dump the sc-55 would also work for the sc-8820.

no, that cannot be the case, because SC-55 MCU is H8/532 and SC-8820 is using AFAICT SH7016 - they are totally different.