A returning customer of mine found a vintage Soviet drum machine and asked me if I was willing to recombobulate it. I took the challenge... and this is the first part of a little series of insights on this interesting device. It's a microprocessor system with RAM, ROM, VFD, keyboard, DACs, whatnot... Given the political & economic situation, it's interesting to go through it. It's pretty typical Soviet electronic engineering with all the ICs using Soviet rather than Western markings, so I had to do some research to find the equivalents and determine their purpose.

A lot of work has been done off the camera, and it was a great learning opportunity too. Who would have expected that I'd not only have to program EEPROMs, but also deal with programming voltage level mismatch and make a level shifter to get it to program at all? That's engineering, that's what I do for a living... Sorta.

0:00 Intro

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