Alesis HR-16B Drum Machine Take Apart

Vintage Alesis HR-16B Drum Machine. 47 sounds. 16-Bit quality. 1989. Main sound board. The case is a cheap tupperware type plastic with a paper foil for RF shielding. The hardware is identical to the HR16 introduced in 1987 except for the wave ROMs. It is made in USA with no surface mount components, only DIP IC's on a double sided circuit board. An 8-bit 8031 microcontroller running at 12 Mhz (probably only 2 Mhz cycle speed) with with 32K ROM and 32K RAM (to the left of the CPU). The DM3AQ is a special ALESIS ASIC that generates the sounds from the two Wave ROM above it. The D/A convertor is beside it. The 3.6 V 1/3AA Lithium backup battery is still going after 21 years. The piezoelectric discs are for sensing velocity of the keypads. RIbbon cable connect to the main board. For an 8-bit machine, the user interface is quite responsive unlike the latency of software machines today.

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Category:

Music

Tags:

• Alesis HR-16B
• HR16
• Drum machine
• keyboard
• synthesizer
• 8031
• DM3AQ
• D/A
• samples
• MIDI
• circuit bending
• vintage
• electronics

[chinesemusic]

Check the connector to the display. The display is a pretty standard 16x2 HD44780 parallel input LCD. It can be replaced easily

[johnberg51]

fffff

[iamexodusnow]

Can you fix these? I have one with no select slider and no volume slider. Also it would not power on with the adapter and now I don't have an adapter.

[009relic1]

"mouser electronics" has the backup battery replacement! they are $5

667-TL5101P

TL5101/P COMP-4-5

1/2AA .95Ah AXIAL

[009relic1]

where can you get a new battery for this drum machine?

[FtwAndFreeTheZebras]

my hr-16b display is displaying jibberish and the jibberish moves and changes when the machine plays - i was thinking internal battery.Any suggestions? It works fine otherwise

[tommymandel]

Could you help me find the proper replacement lithium back-up battery for this unit? Is it hard to take apart? Thank you.

[lightswitchlarry]

epic