As I have mentioned in my previous posts about the Ensoniq Control 16, it is a DAW control surface designed to interface to proprietary DAW software via a proprietary PCI card.  As I have the C16, but not the PCI card, I have been working on reverse engineering the interface so that I can build a USB adaptor for it and use it with my PC.

I have previously written about how I built an RS-232 adaptor for the Control 16, but this alone did not allow me to communicate with the Control 16 as I did not know its communication protocol. As I did not have the PCI card to act as a master and provide something for the C16 to communicate with, I was not able to sniff the communications and reverse engineer them. My solution instead was to replace the firmware running on the C16’s microcontroller with one that I custom wrote, and which used my own communication protocol.

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As I stated in my first Control 16 post, the C16 is meant to connect to a proprietary Ensoniq PCI card (which I don’t have.)  So instead I have been reverse engineering the C16 interface so that I can convert it for use with my PC.  The C16 has two connectors on the back a 1/4″ jack, which is used to connect an optional footswitch; and an RJ-45 connector, which is proprietary.  Both connectors are mounted on a board called PWR/SER_I/F.

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While working on my control 16 project I realised I would need to replace the firware of the onboard microcontroller, an AT89C52.  Unfortunately, the AT89C52 is a mission to program (as it is parallel programmable only) so I have replaced it with an AT89S52, which supports in-circuit serial programming.  What I still lacked was an ISP programmer; however, instead of building one I made use of an old Xilinx DLC5 parallel port JTAG cable (schematic).  This was fairly straight forward under Ubuntu 9.04, using UISP AVR and AT89S programming software.  The following instructions assume the target is self powered and has an oscillator/crystal connected if required. NB these instructions are written from memory, so if you find a mistake please post a comment.

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I scored a few DMF-50573NB-FW 480×80 pixel graphic LCDs off trademe for $NZ5 each.  However, the documentation around on the internets for this particular variant of the Optrex DMF family seems to be sparse. So here is the information that I have gleaned from the looking at the devices themselves, datasheets for other LCDs in the family, probing with a multimeter and general experimentation. No guarantees as to the accuracy of this data, but so far it has worked for me.  If anyone has a datasheet please link in the comments .

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I bought an Ensoniq Control 16 off Trademe cause it was going for fairly cheap relative to new control surfaces.  The problem with the Control 16 is that it is designed to only work with a proprietary PCI card from PARIS.  So I am planning on reverse engineering it and building a USB adaptor.  First things first, though, it needed to be disassembled so I can reverse engineer the circuit.  Here are some pix for those who are interested.

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