I recently revived my trusty old Digital Music MX-8 MIDI patch bay, and I was excited to find I still had a SYSEX dump from it to restore all my old routings. Unfortunately, I've forgotten how to get it to receive a SYSEX dump, and the manual doesn't say as near as I can tell--it does a good job of explaining how to send (which works nicely) but not receive. Can anybody help me understand how to get the unit to receive a previous SYSEX dump? Thanks!

Wow... it's been a while since I've even heard mention of an MX-8...

I believe the main trick was that you had to route the Input that will be receiving the SysEx Dump to Processor A. The message itself should take care of the rest.

Let us know how it goes!

YES! That was the missing tidbit, well, that and a slightly dirty MIDI out port on my recently revived Yamaha DX7II-FD. Once I cleaned up the MIDI out on the keyboard, made sure that I was getting a proper data stream, and then connected up that output to processor A, the MX-8 came through like a champ and accepted the next SYSEX dump just fine (broadcast via MDR save from the keyboard). I can hardly believe it, but in the last four days, I've revived all the hardware that got largely set aside 30+ years ago, and it's all reinitialized with all my old data. That's simply astounding to me.

Thanks for the help! I'm making a note for future reference.

By the way, the MX-8 is still the best dedicated MIDI patch bay of which I'm aware. In fact, I haven't seen any since the MX-8. Was that a category of gear that just didn't get off the ground or something? I still find the MX-8 incredibly useful for bringing together many different devices.

@Phileosophos - I just wanted to thank you for bringing up my beloved MX-8. F'n love it and miss it.

Aw, you're welcome. Believe me, I'm very glad to have revived mine. Just FYI, a quick look on EBay shows several units for sale, and relatively cheap at that ($40 - $70). Maybe you should pick up another?

I have to add that I'm still surprised that there aren't other such patch bays on the market today, at least not that I can find. I guess everybody went full-computer or something. But I still find it handy to be able to change routings so easily in wrangling multiple devices.

Thanks for the kind words!