Nord User Forum

Hello everybody,
it's my first step in your community and in the clavia world with a beautiful nord lead 1 expanded !!!! (love it).
I find this and i'm wondering if it will work with my nl : http://www.thomann.de/fr/the_tpc_compac ... dapter.htm
Thanks in advance for your answers.

No, it won't work, the Nord Lead needs an SRAM card, and an adapter for a Compact Flash card will not make the card appear as such.

Thanks a lot

Someone will have a good website to find some ?

I would think they would be rather hard to find these days; I can't really think of any modern day usage for that type of technology. Still, a google search for 'pcmcia sram card' should yield something; I found this page for instance: http://www.amtron.com/sram.htm at the top of the list, although that particular site is very pricey, being geared to industrial and military applications. The smallest card you can get hold of these days is probably 256 kB, which is larger than the size required by the Nord Lead (64 kB), but I can verify that the size is no problem as I had a 256 kB card in my Nord Rack 2 for a number of years; you cannot use the excess size for anything but the card otherwise works fine.

Hi, I landed here for a similar search, replacing the PCMCIA SRAM of my NL2. I wonder if there are any better solutions by now - I would love to keep playing this great instrument, and actually be able to STORE what I have to make from near-scratch every time now

For reference, what I found so far (March 2016, I'm in Europe) is
- Thomann sells new 1GB PCMCIA SRAM cards, but at a steep price (well over a hundred euro). I don't know if these work with NL's, as the large surplus of memory space might affect functionality (the NL only needs 64Kb, as said) I've not found anyone posting on it as solution, nor problem.
- There's also a guy (from memorix-elektronik.de, who apparently produced the cards originally for Clavia) that sells them new(?) at about half the above price (dependent on shipping), you can contact him over mail.
- And there're some 'industry' places where PCMCIA cards are sold, the one mentioned above still an option that pops up on top when googled.

That's it for PCMCIA SRAM cards, which are the original, but perhaps not best solution, as they only last a couple of years (provided you keep the battery of the card also with sufficient charge!). I'm trying to find a solution that will last a little longer, and hopefully more flexible.

- Then you come across PCMCIA adapters that are mentioned to work in combination with a small Compact Flash (CF) card. Same issue perhaps with the over-size (and dammit, Moore's law seems against us here!): it's increasingly hard to find CF cards closer to 32MB than GB... Again, I don't know if too much over-size is an issue, this other forum thread seems to suggest so: http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthread ... cs/2768406. I'm about to try this out, after scrambling the pieces together off second hand sites as long as the price keeps low. Flash memory is said to last ~10-15 years (dependent on how much you rewrite, as it is write cycles that count, not so much the material) and with a CF USB reader/writer and a few CF cards I might at least be settled for a while longer, till the pots & pitch finally come off. (Or, I finally just sell it, or manage to exchange it for a 2X )

Any other working option or opinion would be more than welcome. I even thought for a sec what it would take to build some kind of custom PCMCIA-to-replacable-flash/USB module to stick into the old red monster, literally enabling it to be wired, or plugged with a tiny usb dongle. But then reality kicked in: I know more about Thai noodle cooking than electronics and low-level programming.

Thanks for any help, Sytse.

Judging from the info in your post, you are now the resident expert on PCMCIA card business. NL2 is probably the least represented model Nord in this forum. You might possibly find someone with input on that at electro-music.com.

Best advice is simply to live with what you've got for onboard RAM: 40 programs and 0 (!) performances, or give it up and transfer to the NL2X/NR2X model. Same architecture, programs are compatible, and HUGE memory for programs and performances.

Once in a blue moon the original cards show up on ebay...

Bless,

Pablo

Hi again, thought to leave an update, albeit not a very positive one yet..

I managed to get a PCMCIA adapter and 32Mb CF card, indeed NL2 does see it, asks to format ("For" flashing) and seems to do so when you push 'store' (flashing stops, after a couple of seconds the display switches to the slot number you had active before) and it <i>seems</i> to be saving a new patch in 1.1 and up, BUT ... no recall. Moreover, as soon as I re-enter the card, the NL asks to format, again.

I can't yet read & format the card at the moment via a computer to check if there's a problem there (no CF reader), but could there be another issue? Firmware, machine factory reset? Anyone an idea?

Thanks

This is part speculation, but since the Nord is designed for SRAM cards, and the programming sequence for Flash memories is vastly different from a simple SRAM, I would think that it simply cannot write to any card with Flash memory on it, such as a CF card (or even a PCMCIA Flash memory card).

Regarding over size cards, I can report that I used a 256 kilobyte SRAM card with my Nord Rack 2 successfully. I don't know if that means that any size over 64 kilobyte will work though.

As for PCMCIA SRAM cards only lasting a couple of years, the cards I've seen have had replacable batteries, although one of the two cards I had had a slightly unusual type that I could only find in some online stores.

If one doesn't need the replacability of the card, one could probably hack together a little PCB with an SRAM chip on it, and connect it inside the Nord. My understanding is that the signals to a PCMCIA are basically a standard address and data bus type interface, with a few control signals for chip select and read/write control. Thus it shouldn't require a lot of electronics to interface to it.

Personally, if faced with the choice today, I would go for the 2X, even if I like the graphics on the 2 better, for two reasons: a) Obviously the memory issue - and the 2X has more memory than the 2 with a single card, and b) the keyboard response on the 2X is smother than on the 2 which always seemed a bit random to me. The only reason to go with the 2 (or 1) in this day and age is if you want to explore 'Pelles mode' I would think.

Thanks Ricard for the reply!

Indeed I'm starting to incline towards exchanging the red lady for a 2X model. Somehow though I don't like the idea of selling off a good keyboard without a solution for the issue, apart from perhaps the price difference (~€250, more than a €75 PCMCIA card). Plus I'm not sure I find a 2X for little shipping cost where I am currently.

If one doesn't need the replacability of the card, one could probably hack together a little PCB with an SRAM chip on it, and connect it inside the Nord. My understanding is that the signals to a PCMCIA are basically a standard address and data bus type interface, with a few control signals for chip select and read/write control. Thus it shouldn't require a lot of electronics to interface to it.

Replaceability already has become an issue, unless I'd buy a stack of cards & batteries. I was thinking about something like this PCB indeed (including a usb interface preferably), but only if I could make it a fun hobby project with someone that knows a bit more about SRAM chips & protocols than me. And if it works then post that as open source .

But neither are solutions that help me 'quickly' to make more music!