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Name: Flavio Vit
E-mail: flavio.m.m.vit@gmail.com
Thursday 8th September 2011 2:14 am U.K. Time

My VZ-1 display is getting dimmer as years pass by. Nowadays it is almost impossible to see what is being displayed. Has anybody faced similar problem and found a solution?

Flavio ViT

Name: Steve (EZVZ Webmaster)
E-mail: Steve@SallyAndSteve.DeleteThisBit.com
Thursday 8th September 2011 10:42 am U.K. Time

(1) You are talking about poor contrast, in which case hold down the Display button while moving the data slider to adjust it.

(2) You mean that the blue/green glow of the backlight is fading and getting dimmer. This is a known problemas the Electro-luminescent Foil (EL Foil) fades with age. The good news is that this is repairable. You can buy the foil and cut it to the required size, or buy it ready cut. This company in Germany sells it and ships worldwide: http://www.midi-rakete.de/ and the website includes instructions. They sell it ready cut for the VZ1/10, but it's 25 Euros (not sure if that includes shipping), which is a bit pricey. You might need to find a German speaker to translate parts of the website. I know of no other company that sells it specifically for the VZ, but people here have reported that it does work.

Alternatively, if you Google for "electroluminescent foil" you'll find various companies that sell it so you might be able to get some cut to size, or cut it yourself, but I'm not quite sure how you attach the wires as I've not done it myself.

I also heard once of someone fitting some very small incandescent bulbs inside their machine instead, powered from one of the power lines inside the VZ (don't use the original EL power supply as it is 85 Volts!). Much cheaper, but not as good a result I presume.

All of the above options require some electronics skill.

Name: Daniel S.
E-mail: d-j-s@hotmail.com
Sunday 16th October 2011 9:08 pm U.K. Time

Name: Steve (EZVZ Webmaster)
E-mail: Steve@SallyAndSteve.DeleteThisBit.com
Monday 17th October 2011 4:57 pm U.K. Time

I did once know the answer to that as I had to work it out once to make my VZPATCH editor, but I don't seem to have a record of it anywhere handy. I seem to remember that it is very easy to work out though, and is something as easy as just adding up all the bytes and then taking the bottom 8 bits, or something really simple like that. I'll have to see if I can locate the original program code. Also, be aware that there are several mistakes in the System Exclusive data dump specification, which I did once document. I'll see if I can find that too.

Name: Steve (EZVZ Webmaster)
E-mail: Steve@SallyAndSteve.DeleteThisBit.com
Monday 17th October 2011 5:01 pm U.K. Time

There is a checksum on the end of every block of voice patch data (336 bytes) and on the end of every block of Op patch data (100 bytes).

To get the checksum, add up every byte in that block, take the last seven bits (ie MOD 128) then subtract the answer from 128 to get your final checksum value.

Name: Steve (EZVZ Webmaster)
E-mail: Steve@SallyAndSteve.DeleteThisBit.com
Monday 17th October 2011 5:04 pm U.K. Time

Don't forget that all data bytes, and the checksum, are transmitted as two four bit nibbles and that the HIGH order data is transmitted first and NOT the Low order data as mentioned in the SysEx manual page 8.

Name: Steve (EZVZ Webmaster)
E-mail: Steve@sallyandsteve.DeleteThisBit.com
Monday 17th October 2011 10:34 pm U.K. Time

http://www.stevegutteridge.com/ezvz/Sysex_Errata.txt

Name: Daniel
E-mail: d_skaborn@yahoo.com
Wednesday 2nd November 2011 7:19 pm U.K. Time

Name: Steve (EZVZ Webmaster)
E-mail: Steve@SallyAndSteve.DeleteThisBit.com
Thursday 3rd November 2011 10:18 am U.K. Time

If I remember correctly, the VZ Sysex dump includes the Midi channel number that the data was sent on within the data. You must send the data to the VZ on this Midi channel number else the transfer fails. As it was someone else who did the Sysex dumps for me, I don't know what Midi channel is inside the data, so you may have to experiment (or consult the VZ Sysex specification and compare against the data in the file).

Name: Daniel
E-mail: d_skaborn@yahoo.com
Friday 4th November 2011 10:07 pm U.K. Time

I had some problem with dumping banks to my VZ8m, so I wrote a little application splitting the bank dumps to single patch dumps. Works nice. ( check it on http://sonica.comoj.com ) This inspired me, and I am now about to write an automated patch maker for the VZ, that combines parameters from different patches to new ones. But I don't get the checksums right... Found an old post here where you wrote about the checksum calculation. You wrote that the checksum is split into two bytes like the rest of the data, but as I get it this is not true, the checksum seams to be a 7bit byte.

What I tried to do in my checksum calculation, is to add up all bytes from the data block (combined to bytes). Sum all these and then take 0x80 - ( sum & 0x7F ). This do not match the checksum in the dumps.

I'm sure the to-byte combination is correct since the patchname ASCIIs is ok.

Name: Steve (EZVZ Webmaster)
E-mail: Steve@SallyAndSteve.DELETEthisBIT.Com
Saturday 5th November 2011 11:41 am U.K. Time

Name: Daniel
E-mail: d_skaborn@yahoo.com
Saturday 5th November 2011 12:41 pm U.K. Time

Name: Daniel
E-mail: d_skaborn@yahoo.com
Saturday 5th November 2011 6:21 pm U.K. Time

Name: chris mills
E-mail: cgmills64@gmail.com
Wednesday 16th November 2011 2:06 am U.K. Time

Name: Steve (EZVZ Webmaster)
E-mail: Steve@sallyandsteve.DeleteThisBit.com
Wednesday 16th November 2011 10:40 pm U.K. Time

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/CZsynth/

You will also need my errata list: http://www.stevegutteridge.com/ezvz/Sysex_Errata.txt

Name: R.Wyatt
E-mail: rwhills@live.co.uk
Wednesday 11th January 2012 10:38 am U.K. Time