Electronic Home Keyboard Media

For some reason, I have always been interested in anything that uses removable, interchangeable storage media, and this interest extends to home electronic keyboards. I am particularly interested in the Casio ROM Pack and Yamaha Playcard systems. These were roughly contemporary, presumably competing, systems for storing pre-recorded music information, for playback on home keyboards. Both systems also have 'training' modes which teach you how to play the music stored on the media, and both work in very similar ways, generally using small LEDs above each key to show you which key to play next.

The earliest Casio ROM Packs I have seen are dated 1983, while the earliest Yamaha Playcards are dated 1982. This suggests that Yamaha were first to market with their system, but I am not sure about this - please let me know if you know who was first and can prove it!

There are also some notes on Other Keyboard Media - if you know of any formats I've left out, please let me know. 

Casio Keyboard Media

• Casio ROM Packs

• Casio Bar Code Media
  

Yamaha Keyboard Media

• Yamaha Playcards

• Other Yamaha Media
  

User Manuals

User Manuals for most Yamaha keyboards are available from the Yamaha Manual Library.

Manuals for the Casio SK series of Sampling keyboards can be found at the Casio SK Series Keyboards site.

Here are some Casio manuals that I have not been able to find elsewhere:

• Casio PT-50 Operation Manual and Addendum (English Only)
  
• Casio PT-82 Operation Manual (English Only)
• Casio PT-87 Operation Manual (English Only)
• Casio MT-18 Operation Manual (English Only)
• Casio PT-80 Operation Manual (English Only)
  
• Casio MT-600 Operation Manual (English Only)
• Casio CT-840 Operation Manual (English Only)
  
• Casio VL-1 Operation Manual (English Only) -- Originally sourced from www.oldschool-sound.com, which is no longer available.

Lots of other Casio manuals are available from gen.error's Casio Keyboard Manuals page.  (Note that Casio manuals are usually bi-lingual, containing English and Spanish sections. Only the English parts of the manuals are included in the above PDF files, which explains the "missing" page numbers.)

I also have an Instruction Manual for the Saisho PRO.SYNTH.

Service Manuals / Technical Documents

• Casio SK-8 Service Manual (This is a fixed version of the document available from the Casio SK Series Keyboards site, which was corrupt.)

• Yamaha PC-100 Service Manual and Parts List (The "missing" pages were blank in the original document.)
  

Circuit Bending

Sorry, I'm not really interested circuit bending; I like the keyboards in their original unadulterated form.

If you're looking for an excellent detailed keyboard site with more of a circuit bending bent, try WarrantyVoid.