Does anybody know why they made this connector on the Minimoog once, and why they could have done it? Thanks!
It certainly isn’t a factory job.
Could be precursor to the db25 connector which is on the Voyagers, certainly it’s the same idea. Obviously, this was an add-on, after the fact mod. Very easy to pull the back cover off of the Minimoog; from there if you take some high resolution pics of where the wires connect, you’ll get some good feedback of what each pin might do for you.
On the other hand, you can blow something sky high by shooting voltage into a circuit that is not properly protected to accept (e.g no diodes and plenty of other risks, unfortunately).
The connector itself is a 24 pin Centronics and I can tell by the corrosion on the body of the shielding that it’s aged. (how long have you owned this particular Minimoog?)
Perhaps this connector and ribbon cable is a mod to connect a later version of the Sequential Circuits 700 Programmer. This Minimoog was manufactured just a couple of years before the introduction of the 700 Programmer which was one of Sequential Circuits early products.