Wayne, I started midi when I found out what those funny looking ports where used for. When I found the midi plugs my wife said I took two expensive hobbies and may one very expensive hobby out of it!

My first synth was a Korg DS8. Shortly thereafter I bought my first midi guitar controller, then came the tone generators. I still have all of them, a Kawai K1M, the TX plus a couple of Rolands. They all are in excellent condition and they all still work! That’s more than I can say for some of my “out dated” soft synths!

The FM 7 was updated to the FM 8. I haven’t updated yet but I should soon. You can program it much like you could the TX. You can also import and save the TX sounds to it. If you purchase FM8 I have approximately 5000 Public Domain and my own sounds I could send to you. Just let me know.

Korg also has some good softsynths from around that era, such as the M1 + T1, Wavestation, etc. You might want to check them out.

Whenever I get something stuck in the back of my throat, I dislodge it by drinking a beer.
It's called the Heineken Maneuver.

64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware