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Korg Kronos — Hardware Emulation

Emulating the Korg Kronos NKS4 panel board with an ESP32-P4, enabling the Kronos synthesizer software to run on commodity x86 hardware with zero binary patches to Korg's proprietary kernel modules.

Project Status

  • ✅ Full USB protocol reverse-engineered (panel, audio, MIDI)
  • ✅ QEMU emulation working (OA.ko synth engine fully initialized)
  • ✅ Keybed UART protocol decoded and emulated
  • ✅ Complete reference documentation (13 chapters)
  • ✅ Automated build from Korg Recovery DVD (single make disk)
  • 🔲 ESP32-P4 firmware implementation
  • 🔲 Real hardware test on Intel Atom D525

Quick Start

make disk    # Downloads Korg DVDs, builds bootable image
make qemu    # Builds QEMU with custom NKS4 + keybed devices
make run     # Boots the Kronos synth engine in QEMU

What This Does

The Kronos is a professional synthesizer workstation. Its software runs on an Intel Atom x86 CPU with a custom coprocessor board (NKS4) handling the display, audio I/O, and keyboard scanning.

This project replaces the NKS4 board with an ESP32-P4 microcontroller, connected via USB (panel/audio) and UART (keyboard). The result is a fully functional Kronos running on a standard mini-ITX board.

Documentation

See the Architecture chapter for an overview, or Emulation for QEMU setup details.

License

  • Code: GPL-3.0
  • Documentation: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0