Hoping the findings of why my KN7000 suddenly failed may help others.

My KN7000 suddenly crashed whilst loading data from the floppy drive, it would try and reboot, but after a couple of attempts completely crashed with no sign of life except the blue light down by the SD card.

Full credit to the engineer who looked at my KN7000 on the isle of wight. An initialisation of the keyboard brought it back to life but was not the final solution.
Everytime data was loaded from the floppy drive the instrument would crash, however he found that when loading all forms of data except custom styles the keyboard worked fine. A hardware test confirmed everything was working fine including disk drive and memory.

Custom styles would load individually and overwrite every allocation for custom styles except the allocation No 9 which would not overwrite, playing the style in No 9 slot also caused problems to the keyboard.

Not being able to overwrite this style even with an individual blank composer transfer led him to try a complete "clear custom style" sent to me by one of the forum members (Joan) according to the engineer this immediatly cleared the problem.

Just wondered if anyone else has had a similar problem.

Kind regards

Peter

Can you remember what the style was and where it came from? Walter.

Good question walter,

The style was a latin amarican style, as it was not overwritable I presume it could have been there for some time before it caused a problem.

Has anyone loaded custom styles and had the KN7000 crash?

Kind regards

Peter

Hi Peter,
That's good news about your KN7000 being back in working order Strange fault
I haven't experienced any problems with the Custom Memory : I tend to use it to group together, similar 'user' styles, in banks of up to 20. Then, for a particular song/tune, if I can't find a suitable Built-In style, I can load a bank of Custom styles, choose one suitable for the song/tune and then transfer it to Composer, if the style is to be used in a sequenced recording.

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Willum

Here's a thought for you.

My Kn7 has crashed on me once and that was after loading a floppy used and saved from the KN6000. As many of you will know that keyboard caused both Technics Customer Services and myself a great deal of problems it was what is known in the UK as "a Friday product". At the time of the crash I was very worried. It then occured to me that maybe the floppy had saved all the faults that were on the KN6000 as well, so I initialised the KN7 back to Factory settings
and everything is back to normal now.

I was very relieved I can tell you and so far, I haven't experienced further problems apart from those I make myself (hope I'm not speaking too soon).

Needless to say, I have now destroyed the offending floppy.

Might this be your problem?

Aud (U.K.)

I think you could have something here.

The floppy I was using at the time of the crash was a disk from a commercial company and i'm almost certain it would have been not software made for the Kn7000 there is also every possibility that it was played and saved on the kn6000.

I had my KN6000 for 18months and it was the most unreliable instrument I ever owned, at least five times whilst playing live the kn6000 locked on boot up and when i re-booted i'd lost all data and had to re-load everything, sold it in the end solely because of this problem, having said that the kn6000 never actually let me down whilst I was playing, and loading from the hard drive any data except Custom styles. (during a performance I never loaded custom styles, just composer registrations and voices etc.

The more I think about what you say the more I think you have hit the nail on the head.

Old corrupt data saved from the KN6000 is more than likely the answer.

I have also deleted the commercial disks content from my PC hard drives. Is there a way to check the details of disk data ie for which Technics keyboard the data on a floppy is designed.

I seem to remember sometime ago being told that you can open a KN file in notepad to give you this info?

All the best

Peter

Hello Peter,

I was so happy to hear that finally every thing is back in order with the kn700.

One things I would like to clarify:

Regarding the a complete "clear custom style" that was sent to you by one of the forum members, that was mentioned above.

Was it a factory clear custom style disk?

Did the engineer load it like you copy a file from the composer to the custom?

Did the "clear custom style" clear all the custom ( 20 ) at once or only one particular custom style at the time?

Thanks for sharing these valuable info.

w/r
Doron Peisic

Hi Doron,

Many thanks for your concerns, i'm also very pleased my KN7000 is back up and running, i'm only too pleased that the fault was software and not hardware otherwise it could have been a very costly experience!.

Unfortunately clearing a composer memory and copying the blank data to the problem custom area (No 9) would not clear the problem nor would trying to overwrite the area.

The clear custom style was loaded via the floppy drive.

Hope the above helps you although i'll keep my fingers crossed you never need the above info, or have you already experienced problems?

Kind regards

Peter

Hi Peter.
Just one final thought. Could you have used a floppie that was already contaminated with a virus? This happened to me once when I downloaded a program from the internet to floppie and although I cleared the program from the floppie for re-use it didn't get rid of the virus. Fortunately I never used it in the keyboard.
Regards
Peter B

The virus would not "attack" the keyboard.
GJ

Hi Peter, hope you're keeping well.

Well it's a thought, but i'm convinced that what happened to my KN7000 was almost identical to the experience that Audrey went through with her KN7000 (as mentioned earlier in this thread)

The Floppy was in itself: Good quality, Formatted often, and never had anything loaded onto it other than KN... Files.

I also have all the latest Norton anti virus software and definition files on my computer.

Kind regards

Peter

I suspect that the salvation for your keyboard came from the CD in Alec's book

Hello Peter,

I have not experience it, however my concern came up, since I occasionally did buy floppy disks with premade styles, to me it is very crucial to be aware that some files that were not specifically made on the kn7000 itself may interfere in some way with the kn7000 custom memory.

I would like to know, how can I obtain the clear floppy disk, just as a rescue tool for the kn7000. Any thoughts?


w/r
Doron Peisic

Hi Doron

Isee you are enquiring where you can obtain a clear custom floppy disk.

I believe that Peter was describing the Floppy disk as a METHOD that was used to overwrite his faulty custom file that was causing the problem on his KN7 and is not actually a floppy that can be purchased with this CLEAR file on.

A Clear custom file can be created by anyone who is conversant with the Custom File copy etc., feature and simply means copying a CLEAR style overwriting each of the 1-20 custom files.

If you are not familiar enough to do this then you can purchase Alecs' book that Walt Tenay has mentioned of a previous subject on this forum "How to get the best out of your KN7" - an excellent book, and that will also include a CD which will contain amongst other things a CLEAR CUSTOM FILE. Joan

Joan,

Thanks for you insight. I am considering your recomandation.

w/r
Doron Peisic

Doron,

As a Technics owner it will be the best investment you have ever made.

Fran in Florida

Hi there Doron

If you are new to the Technics keyboards then I would suggest that you also purchase Alec's How Do I Do that Extended Manual which was written for the previous KN keyboard the KN6 and which also can be obtained from the Walt Tenay site. see previous postings on this.

The Getting the most from your KN7000 follows on from that previous issue and addresses the newer features of this latest keyboard.

With both these manuals you will be in a far better position to understand the keyboard.

It is worth noting that these two manuals ARE NOT TO BE CONFUSED with the Technics issue of their manuals.

Joan

Hello All,

Thanks all for all the support.

I did order from Walt today the books according to your recommendations.

How to do that, getting to know you kn7000, and its video. I also bought the PDF file for the how do that, which it is in fully colored.


Now I will have much more to explore and learn, and I am looking forward for it!

W/r
Doron Peisic