So my very kind girlfriend tore apart my Korg 707 and fixed some keys and replaced all the M&M button sensors... but without asking, replaced the battery and thus.. I lost all my patches...

Having a bit of trouble figuring out how to get this thing to receive sysex patch dumps. Any advice would be great. It's pretty obvious how to send send sysex.. but not receive....

and everything I find is usually about the Korg DS-8 and a bunch of dead links.

My understanding is that you will need a card to reload the sounds and make it work again. Don't ask me why but the microwave is the same and all efforts where wasted until I bought myself a card. It's the same with the DS-8, no difference.

HHmmm... my girfriend's father said the same thing. He has some 707 cards and said he'll ship 'em as soon as he finds them.

but seriously... really?
So, if I bought some patches from, let's say, Kid Nepro ... I'd be up shits creek?

You should always make a backup of your sounds before changing the battery. That is common sense, I would think.

what card? an MCR-3?
Just doesn't really make sense to me.. what would a blank card do for me?

1. my girlfriend just went ahead and did it without me asking.
2. don't have an MCR-3 card.

I have an MCR-02 card for that reason (for my DS-8). Of course you will need to dump your sounds on it before changing the battery.

So like... these patches are a scam then?

Korg DS-8 & 707 Sounds and Patches

how would one load them?

No, you can load patches via sysex just fine, just not when the RAM is totally scrambled after a battery exchange. There are only a few synths and effects that show this behavior and the waldorf microwave and the DS-8/707 are the other ones I know. They are not working properly when the RAM is scrambled.

Unfortunately you and your girlfriend where not aware of the situation, but at least you have access to the card. Once the RAM is "in order" you will be able to save and load your sounds via sysex again.

GAH!!

and she thought she was doing me a favor by changing the battery without me asking.

Eventually the battery needed to be replaced and who is really checking the net for info on how to restore the sounds afterwards. Even you would have made a copy via sysex you still would face the same faith.

Seriously.. thanks so much for the help!!

Thought I was going crazy.

I'm having the same issue with my 707 - all the presets are scrambled after changing the battery and it just plain refuses to receive sysex programming, even though it accepts note-data just fine. I've never heard about a synth being so picky as to need a backup card... Since cards are expensive and all i want to do is load the factory presets from a SYX file, i'd like to know if another way will work.

My question is this - when the ram gets scrambled, all patches get weird values for each parameter. I have manually set each of those parameters to a normal value for a single patch. Would manually rewriting all 100 slots with copies of this one "normal" patch be the same as loading everything from a card?

Let us know!

Drat, i was hoping somebody had already done it Guess i'll have to try it tomorrow...

My guess is that it won't work. But worth a try.

Good Luck!!

I tried that.. still sounded pretty messed up..

No luck... I re-wrote all patches and combinations with a default-sounding e-piano patch, and it still refuses to accept SysEx.

It can dump its own SysEx data to MIDI-OX just fine, but not the other way around. What's strange though, is that the dump i got from 707's is 5kb, while the factory one from the net is nearly 8kb.

Djugel - have you tried with the card yet? I'm curious - does it have to be a RAM card, or would a ROM card work just as well?

The 707 isn't so complex a synth really. Might be faster to just sit down on the couch and program in a new full bank than try to get the sysex dump working. :-)

I think that is what he did pretty much. Doesn't seem to work.

Yes, that's what i did - it used to crash when selecting a combination, but everything works fine after i rewrote them. Apart from loading SysEx that is... Am i missing something? Perhaps there might be more data that needs to be reset, not only the "Progs" and "Combi's".

Yes, the memory card!

ah well, I meant write new patches and use them and don't worry about sysex dumps...

What i meant was, what else is on that memory card that can't be programmed manually? Does it have to be a RAM card, or does a ROM card work too? What about DS-8 or Atari Portfolio cards?

Most likely all of the cards should work when formatted for the 707/DS-8. But at the end your safest bet is to get a ROM card and overwrite your memory. In case of a RAM card, you don't know if your 707 will format the card right. After all, it is not 100% working at the moment (e.g. sysex).

All what I did was to flush the my sounds back into the unit from a RAM card where I saved my sounds on before and all is good. And I have a DS-8. What you want to do or works for you may differ.

I ordered a 707 from Abertronix in Japan - [i have bought nearly half my outboard gear from him and it is always batter than advertised.]
Anyway he had to change the battery in mine before it shipped and installed a fix from this guy in Indiana
Korg DS 8 Korg 707 Largest Collection of Sounds Patches | eBay

He was so impressed he raved to me about it. I have since upgraded my Wavestation A/D and my Yamaha TX81Z with these kits and everything about them is first rate - especially the documentation.

I have no affiliation with these guys but the gear is great and very cost effective.

Can you ask him for more details on how he did it? I got the the same CD with various SYX files, and none of them work. It still refuses to receive any kind of SysEx programming - all it does it stop making sounds when the transfer starts, same as with MIDI-OX. I read about a "Clear Memory" function where you have to hold Up+Down and power up while holding them, but it doesn't work.

On the other hand if i hold down 3 and 4 while powering on, a little message would appear - "7.11.30 870905th" i'm guessing this must be the firmware version and number of the unit.

So .. the ROM card fixed it and everything is back to normal.

Only problem is these sounds are so bad I actually miss the Factory Presets.. anyone know where I can find them? All I find is DS-8 presets..

Hello all.
I just got here. I've finally acquired another DS8 after stupidly passing one to a friend instead...
It was in rough shape but its all good now.
I've changed the batteries in both mine and that friends DS8 only to encounter the dreaded scattered ram and alien display with little to no sounds available.
After days of trying to figure out how to dump patches via sysex inside I finally read through a bunch of forums and figured out/pieces together that it needs a very slow transfer rate. I found a few .syx patches on line and tried a random one. I used Sysex Librarian for Mac OSx.
I set the transfer speed to 3% and allowed for pauses between transmissions.
After the transfer, I shut off the DS8 and powered up and there it was. All good. If anyone needs any more advice or exact specifics, please don't hesitate to ask. I can't believe how many people are out there suffering! I hope this helps y'all. *Remember to disable memory protect in the DS8.
I imagine the same efforts need to be applied to the 707...
Cheers.

I know this is quite an old thread, but I just discovered something useful for DS-8 & 707 owners and I want to share it!

If you look at the sysex specifications of the two instruments, you will discover that they have a different "model ID" but their patches are basically compatible; in order to easily load the patches from one model to the other, you must change the hex strings according to "source" and "destination" instrument.

Here's what I did for loading DS-8 banks into my battery-resetted 707:

- Open sysex file with MidiOX (don't tell me you never heard of it, do you?)
- replace string "F0 42 30 13" (DS-8 version) with "F0 42 30 1A" (707 version)
- send sysex file to 707 and enjoy

Look also for numbers different than "30" on the above header: they would use a MIDI channel different than 1 (the default one) for the sysex dump to transfer!
For example there's a DS-8 bank around the web which is set to MIDI channel 10 = "39".

As usual, first of all check that the memory protection is set to "off" and the sysex data messages are set to "on" on the destination instrument.

Happy cross-loading! ;-)