Adding A Portamento Circuit...

[aron]

The sound of polyphonic portamento is a cool one! I think the Korg Mono/Poly had it and it was also really cool on my Oberheim! Of course I can get all of that and more with my Korg Kronos or Kurzweil PC3! Very easily!

[space_ryerson]

Even the Kiwisix upgrade doesn't add portamento! Sheesh.

The Polysix uses a pretty unusual multiplexed-CV linear VCO scheme which would make adding portamento pretty difficult, and the linear VCOs would make it sound pretty weird too.
Although the Kiwisix replaces both the uPs in the Polysix (the main board one, and the voiceboard's 'key assigner' one) any Portamento would have to be added *after* the CVs are demultiplexed - that involves hacking the signals coming out of a '4051 1-to-8 switch IC on the voice board.
So it's possible in theory, but it ain't easy, and it's certainly not possible with a firmware update/replacement, even to both processors.

HTH,
Tom

Wow. Good to know!

The one synth I feel could really benefit from a firmware/cpu replacement is the Akai AX80. I love it as is, but there are a bunch of little things I feel could be improved with a CPU upgrade.