Generalmusic S3T

Posted by: Jokeyman

Generalmusic S3T - 04/12/05 02:58 PM

Technical problem-disassembled instrument to clean keyboard-disconnected ribbon cables, carefully put everything back-now ramdisk (512K) is locked up. Everything else works perfectly, and ramdisk had worked perfectly for the three years I've owned it. Is there a way to initialize the ramdisk? I know how to bypass, holding down enter and powering up, but trying to access the ramdisk locks up everything. I noticed a small battery or capacitor on the board-measures 4.25V with S3T powered down. Could this be gone? Keyboard dates on the chips are 1995 I seem to recall. If anyone can help, thanks!
Posted by: Dazza

Re: Generalmusic S3T - 04/17/05 10:09 AM

Hi

I would suggest carefully disconnect and re connect the conectors inside the keyboard. I have a few gem kybds and have had similar problems. It may be that one has not reconnected correctly.

A bit of a common fault with them. In later years they spot glued the connectors with a heat glue gun. Worth doing if you move the machine about a lot.

Failing this i will have a re think
Posted by: Jokeyman

Re: Generalmusic S3T - 04/17/05 10:38 AM

Thanks for the input. I tried this once-but with all the grunge that was in this machine, you may be right. Every connector has to be oriented one way, so I thought that was sufficient-possibly a loose connector terminal on the board that was created by my disconnecting and re-connecting-I've noticed a electronic relay-type clicking sound I hadn't noticed before, so there may be an errant connection somewhere, it doesn't take much. I'll check my work again.
Posted by: Jokeyman

Re: Generalmusic S3T - 04/18/05 01:40 PM

Disassembled it again, checked all connections-everything looks fine, but still no ramdisk. Again, I am hearing some kind of clicking as of a relay or mechanical switch of some kind, whenever I power up the instrument that I had noticed before. And it isn't near the power supply, not sure what this could be. Thanks again.
Posted by: Jokeyman

Re: Generalmusic S3T - 04/25/05 04:02 AM

Finally managed to solve this problem. In case anyone else runs into this with the ramdisk, shorting the turboboard's battery terminals momentarily-cuts the voltage to the flash ram chips and clears out the memory contents-seems to have done no harm, all ramdisk functions perform normally again-just have to get to the the turboboard battery, which is just under the keyboard assembly. I used a short piece of wire to the + and - terminals and presto, problem solved.