Important question about faulty, dead, burned...EB16 card

Hi,

I have a very serious question regarding the EB16 card. I'm looking for a non-working, dead, or variously damaged card, as long as it has the L7A1414 chip, which would obviously be damaged. I need it to see if this design can be recreated. It's almost always possible in case of old designs. It's extremely difficult and time-consuming, and sometimes unfortunately impossible. If anyone has such a card and could submit it for testing, I'd be very grateful. The testing is destructive because I need to have to access the crystal inside the black mass containing the silicon die.

The integrated circuit looks terrible with so many pins, but there's no need to get discouraged.

Cheerz
tOri

That would be really cool, but i have never heard about a faulty EB16 card before. Even having some in storage for years, when i put it into an MPC it worked perfectly. I guess you might need to find a completely ruined MPC that has one installed (ie: an mpc sold as parts because of a flood or something)

Hi,

I never heard about faulty EB16 too... Maybe someday someone will reply with good news I need faulty 7A1414 to start. I have some LAB hardware to check possibilities of reverse-engineering.

I think this can be only way now to try to recreate this cool device in newer FPGA or something similar. AKAI won't help for sure...

Cheerz
tOri

It would be cool if there was a way to make an EB-32

Hi,

I just bought a CD3000i sampler motherboard in Japan for a pretty cheap price. It also has a DSP chip, but obviously a different one than the EB-16. Despite this, it looks similar a bit – pins numbers are different 120 (L7A1045) vs 160 (L7A1414), the same QFP chip case, and even similar a bit model numbering – L7A1045, while the EB-16 has a chip marked L7A1414 - these aren't ordinary Motorola's DSPs. I suspect the technology used can be similar for both chips, and that's the point: to see if I can spot anything ;-D Well - I'll destroy this chip from CD3000i, but at least I'll learn something concrete and I'll let you know someday whether reverse-engineering old AKAI chips is even possible...

Cheerz
tOri

Hi,

I did some analysing of sacrified DSP chip from AKAI CD3000i motherboard.
What can I say...
This technology is a bit dense. It is Gate Array better called "Sea of Gates" chip. Unfortunately it needs complete delayering and some additional processing to achieve readable results.
7A1414 chip from EB16 looks more complicated because simple fact - bigger number of legs therefore it could be more difficult than this simpler DSP.
All of this requires a very advanced reverse engineering lab with equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars, if not more...









It's a shame. Is there any hope that someone will take this on someday?

Cheerz
tOri

The https://www.mamedev.org developers seem to have a bit of information for the chip

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/3e3209aa1ff6649036e17a2f4777c8dc1e2d2f43/src/devices/sound/l7a1045_l6028_dsp_a.cpp#L5

Hi,

Yes, I see. This is emulation C code (MAME emulator) not even HDL so it's useability in this case is beyond discussion. I hope someone in future will do serious rev-eng of L7A1414 DSP because it is only way to make more EB16 which unfortunately are very limited in number.

Cheerz
tOri