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Emulator I : Upgrades & Add Ons
Factory Upgrades The Emu factory have long since stopped providing upgrades or spares for the Emulator I. Users are on their own, and there are no third party suppliers either.
 GenMod The Emulator has just a simple low pass filter on each voice with just one control - cutoff ! There is no traditional filter envelope or Q control. So JL Copper
designed a retro fit for a 24dB filter and dual ADSR envelope's. This was known as the Generator Modulator or Gen Mod. It was fitted onto the top surface of the casing, on the right hand side of the disk tray.
RS232 Early Emulators may not have an RS232 socket at all, or
they have the socket but no internal wiring (as in the case of our Rev 3 Emulator I). A Rev 4 CPU board is needed for the RS232 to work.
Computer Upgrade If you had RS232 Serial interface upgrade then you could buy the Personal Computer software for the
Emultaor I and use an Apple computer to control the sampler.
Analog Voltage Interface The Emulator I could be upgraded with an external hardware box to receive and transmit CV and Gate inputs. It connects via the RS232 socket. more »
MIDI The Emulator I launch predated MIDI. However later on in
its life the Emulator I could be updated with a MIDI interface. This is an external box made by JLCooper, that plugs into the RS232 port. It comes with some software for the Emulator too!
Multi Sampling Initially the Emulator I had just 2 samples, upper
and lower. However a Multi Sampling software facility was soon available, so that more than 2 samples could be used. Up to 12 samples can be recorded over the 4 octaves. Each sample can be
a different length and can have different filter and loop settings. Samples can be different too.
The VCA Kludge The Emulator I was originally manufactured with no VCA. This meant sounds continued until the sample ended, even if a key was released. In late 1981 Scott Wedge designed a
50 wire kludge that was retrofitted by Dave Rossum onto all the early Emulators (around 20 in number). Fortunately there was enough space on the edge of the circuit board to do this. At the
January 1982 NAMM E-mu Systems announced the revised Emulator I with a VCA as standard, and a software sequencer.
Memory The 128 Kbytes of memory can not be upgraded.
Engineering Change Orders The Emulator went through a
number of minor revisions during its life, some to fix bugs, others to improve on features.
August 1981 Seven small fixes to the output and panel boards were made to fix PC board errors or reduce noise crosstalk. All
Emulator I's have had this update.
September 1981 ECO's 21 - 24 provide the VCA Kludge and new foot pedal jacks. All Emulator I's have had this update, as it was a free factory upgrade.
December 1981
ECO 26 provides the sequencer upgrade, which was factory fitted on the Mark2 Emulators in 1982. The upgrade for 1981 Emulator owners was a $150 retrofit, or $50 to service centres.
April 1982
First an improvement to the AC harness to reduce hum, this was built in from serial number 70 onwards. Then minor changes to the digital board to enable the RS422 connection to be
hooked up to the Analog Voltage Interface, new OS software was needed for this to work. It was a factory fit from serial number 70 onwards. The Rev 3 power supply was improved to reduce hum (this is needed on serial numbers 30 - 71)
May 1982 Rev 4 power supply gets an upgrade (s/n 100+).
June 1982 Trimmers changed and AC harness again improved.
July 1982 Some trace cuts around IC141.
August 1982
EPROM changed to being a 2716 rather than the old 2708 which was becoming hard to locate new. The EPROM was also updated to improve diskette drive operation, as well as some schematic corrections being made in the service manual.
Dating Your Emulator I You may want to know when your
Emulator I was built, particularly if it is an early model.
Serial Numbers below 30 (sometimes there is no serial number) are Mark 1 1981 models built before December 1981. They may have
the sequencer update, and they almost certainly will have the VCA kludge too.
Serial Numbers between 31 and 70 are Mark 2 models with the sequencer and were built from December 1981 to April 1982.
Serial Numbers between 70 and 100 are Mark2 models and were built in April - May 1982.
Serial Numbers between 100 and 500 ish are Mark2 models and were built between May 1982 and the Fall of 1983. Serial numbers
above around 250 are 1983 models.
Sequencer In 1981 a software sequencer was added with eight
voice polyphony, up to 900 notes and 2 channels. The sequencer has real-time record, basic editing and overdubbing facilities. The sequencer is controlled by eight buttons to the right of the pitch and modulation wheels.
On The Record A vinyl record of the Emulator I was produced to
market the new sampler. We hope to locate one soon.
Manuals
The Emulator initially came with a 30 page preliminary manual, however this seems to be the only user manual through out the models life. Our September 1982 Rev4 Emulator still came with the "preliminary" manual!
OS Disks
The Emulator is dead without its Operating System, and  hard to use without the User Formatting and Multi
Sampling software. We can provide copies of these vital disk for users, as E-mu Systems can provide no support at all. Visit the EmuArc shop to buy them.
The latest known OS version is 3.11. The OS naming convention is
EP8S.nnxx. Where nn is the version number and xx is the release number. The Emulator I can not display the OS version (as there is no LCD!) but the diskettes are labelled from the factory.
Service PROM's
To enable the Emulator I to be serviced E-mu Systems created a number of programs on 1 Kbyte EPROM's, so that the microprocessor could run a different program than the usual boot OS. To make these work you have to replace the boot
EPROM with the appropriate service EPROM, and then switch on.
The Emulator Disk Alignment EPROM enables the diskette drive to be calibrated.
The Emulator Memory Check EPROM enables the RAM to be
checked out without needing the RAM to run the OS.
Copy Protection System diskettes are frequently paired to the machine they came with, as originally the software was copy
protected with a hardware resistor configuration. This meant diskettes could only be used with the Emulator that created them. Later versions of the OS were changed to remove this software
protection, after complaints from users with multiple Emulator I's (lucky people!).
You may still find an Emulator I refuses to read a new or a different system diskette. In this case, take the write protect tab
off the diskette, so the EI can write its unique serial number signature to the diskette. Sample diskettes do not have this issue.
Safety Always make at least 2 copies of each of your OS
diskettes, and make new copies every 5 years (as the magnetic surface does deteriorate over time).
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Site Options
Manuals 
* Operations Manual 
* Brochure 1981
* RS232 option
* Multi Sampling
* User Formatting
* Debug EPROM's
* 3.09 (EP8S.0309)
* 3.10 (EP8S.0310)
* EP8CM.0311