Anyone know about troubleshooting a Tx7??

I just aquired a Yamaha Tx7. While mucking around with it , I pushed a button and the name of the loaded sound came up with ERR next to it and the unit was frozen. I found no answer to this error message in my documentation nor is there a troubleshoot area. Anyway. Now when I turn the thing on.. the screen says ((Yamaha Tx7)) and seems to freeze at that and there doesnt seem to be any way for me to unfreeze it by button pushing. Any suggestions ? Could this mean a dead memory battery or did I accidentally dump the OS somehow ? Yamaha no longer supports this unit so I decided that maybe some of you here would have an idea what to do next or if there's some way to reset it not in the documentation that you know about. I'm going to pop it open and give the inside a good cleaning with some air thought I doubt that will do any good.

However... my first goal (after seeing what this thing looks like) is to make this unit sound like an alarm clock ! (provided I can get it up and running again)

I had one that did basically the same thing . It was the BOOT ROM CHIP that needed replacing . I would also go to one of the DX7/TX-7 sites at the synthzone home page , to see about a combination of buttons to hold down that would force a reboot of the factory settings . It does sound like a boot problem .

But given the age of the TX-7 the battery is bound to need replacing and could be causing problems. At least it is relatively easy to replace a battery to see whether that solves the problem.

Thanks for the info. I'll first pop the thing open and give it a battery change. If that doesnt work, I'll try to hunt up some service manuals for it. I'm sure they exisit somewhere. I'll keep you posted as to what I find out.

Okay. I have a battery for the thing. I have the Tx7 opened. I can't seem to figure out how to get the old battery out. I can't seem to get it to release. Is this thing saudered to the board ? Have any of you successfully changed a Tx7 battery and if so, can you give me a tutorial on how to get the damn stock battery out ?
Thanks

While I haven't changed a battery on a TX-7 it is most likely soldered to the board which was typical of most electronics gear at this time. So you would have to unsolder the battery and resolder the new one. I think it was lack of foresight on the part of electronics companies that never envisaged their products still being in use a decade or more later and needing to replace batteries.

Although I don't know of TX-7 schematics, apart from the keyboard related circuitry the DX-7 schematics should be pretty close and Zicweb has a collection of user manuals and service schematics that may provide some useful info.


[This message has been edited by Nigel (edited 05-31-2002).]