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Drumulator : Upgrades & Add Ons
Overview The Drumulator
has long since been unsupported by E-mu Systems, so you will need to scan second hand adverts and eBay to get any upgrades to the Drumulator.
New Sounds For a few years in the mid 1980's EPROM based drum machines ruled the market, as memory was too expensive to allow lots of long samples to be stored. Drum machines came with a fixed set of 10 to 30 sounds, which users soon wanted to replace. This was possible by buying a new sample chip, opening up the drum machine and replacing one or more of the existing chips.
However the Drumulator is not the easiest of drum machines to upgrade with EPROM's, as 11 of the sounds are spread over 3 chips. Only the crash cymbal has its own EPROM.
Factory Sounds E-mu Systems provided a
replacement crash cymbal EPROM to enable the rather dull ride cymbal to be replaced.
Switched On JLCooper went as far as producing a custom modification that enabled both the ride and crash cymbals to be fitted
internally. A toggle switch was used to select the active sample.
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Digidrums Today's mega company Digidesign started out manufacturing EPROM drum chips - as Digidrums. They produced a
wide range of drum sets for the Drumulator, Linn Drum, Oberheim DMX/DX and Simmonds. The sets completely replaced the factory chips, and cost around $40 each. At least 15 Digidrums sets were created for the Drumulator, the known sets are:
- Simmonds One
- Simmond's Two
- Latin Percussion
- African Percussion
- Heavy Metal Drums
They contain between 8 and 12 samples. A demonstration tape
was available from E-mu Systems, Digidrums or the dealers. Hey, any one still got one we can listen to ?
The Digidrums sound ROM's also included the 64 voice song upgrade.
RS232
The Drumulator RS232 interface protocol is very simple, with 8-bits being used to communicate volume (16 levels) and the drum sound to be played.
 Pad Programmer Feel the need to play the
Drumulator with real sticks ? Well you can with the Pad Programmer. It provides four black, round pads on a separate grey unit, the same size casing as a Drumulator that plugs into the gate inputs of the
Drumulator. The pads are touch sensitive, and generate 5V gate outputs, which can be hooked up to other drum machines or even modular synths. An external AC adapter came with the Pad Programmer.
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Pad Programmers Operating Manual (74 KB/ 4 pages)
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OS Versions The latest version of the Drumulator Operating System is 3.0. The OS version number can be checked by pressing
the MEM and CASSETTE keys together. The LED will display the OS version number as Px.xx (e.g. P3.00). The Drumulator OS was upgraded via an EPROM swap out.
OS Version 2.0 This version was released in May 1983 (actually
signed off by the Chief Wizard - Dave Rossum on 10th May 1983). It provides a very welcome 64 Songs, rather than 8, as well as a song edit mode. The program ROM size was not increased, so the
extra functionality was gained by a bit of rewriting to economise on memory. A bug in song mode was fixed too (where a continuous loops of no segments locked the drum machine). The upgrade was $35.00
 The Graphic Rhythm Composer (GRC)
This Apple II/IIe software provides non-realtime programming of measures and songs, with individual note volume control. The Apple computer is connected from its standard RS232 serial port to
the Drumulator via its Clock/Cassette jack input, with a special cable. The interface is 8-bit serial at 9600 baud
The GRC software has 4 modes:
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Where the joystick is used to move the cursor around a measure of music, placing notes and setting the volume (15 steps). Measures can then be played,
edited and stored to diskette.
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This mode enables existing measures to be linked together to form the segments within the Drumulator.
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This mode links segments and measures into songs. Songs can be saved to floppy disk.
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This mode plays the actual songs back via the Drumulator.
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MIDI Note On
* C1 - Kick
* D1 - Snare
