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by squigg 449 days ago
I have an old Roland S760 sampler from the early 90s. One of the innovations Roland made in this (lower cost) space was to add the ability to hook up a monitor and a mouse, to make chopping samples and programming patches much easier than peering at a tiny screen like on an Akai S1000 of the time (which I also have), or even worse on the S760's tiny two-line display

The mouse connector is MSX, which are very difficult to find these days, so mine came with a DIY MSX->PS2 connector. Sadly the PS2 mouse it came with was on it's last legs, so I wanted to replace it with something more modern. All I could find at the time were MS mice that came with a USB-PS2 connector. When I plugged it in, it barely worked and I could never understand why.

I did finally manage to track down a NOS PS2 mouse and it worked perfectly again. Until this post, I never understood just WHY it didn't work, so thank you!

The S760 is a fantastic sampler. It's kinda like a JD990 but as a sampler and without the full synth engine complexity. Made famous by Daft Punk and a lot of others as the S760 digital multimode filter became one of their signature sounds.

2 comments

Interesting, I have a Roland S-330 from the late 1980s and my main concern getting it was the floppy drive viability. It didn’t occur to me that the mouse would be difficult.
You probably already know this stuff or have decided against it for authenticity or whatever, but just in case, you can use some of the Gotek USB flash drive floppy disk emulators:

https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wiki/Host-Platforms#rol...

And this may or may not be out of date, but may still be useful:

https://llamamusic.com/s50s550/FlashFloppy_GOTEK.html

You might have luck finding connectors on Buyee.jp. MSX was huge in Japan, and Roland is a Japanese corporation
I never thought to check the Japanese auction houses - I have a workmate there who can purchase locally as well. There is one for sale, but it's a bit expensive - I'll keep my eyes open thanks