E-mu Emulator Sampler User Forum for the EIII EII EI and EIII XP

Hi to all this special group.
I would to share my little experience in repairing an EIII to help others that are in the same situation as me.

Two years ago I had the big big luck to catch for a few money a non working EIII keyboard.
The unit didn't power up, but, you know, after I completely rebuilt the digital board of my EII...it's only "A question of time"... ;)

Here is my restoration history explained:

First problem was the internal hd missing: I took one from an old mac and bam...the unit powered up!  8)
So I had my first lesson: without an hd connected the EIII does not power up.

The floppy included with the 2.42 os system was dead, so with Emxp (really thanks ///E-Synthesist) I created one, loaded and I formatted the internal hard disk: after that..ta-daaa...system ok!!

The original display had dimmed and intermittent backlight foil: no problems, I had a backlighted green 20x4 lcd and I quickly replaced. I also removed the old foil inverter, so, no more interferences.

Now some serious problem: I had no samples included with this EIII so I converted some of my Emax samples with Emxp, loaded into the system and..uff...no sound.
Moving volume slider caused no changes, silence and only silence, all three sliders were not working.
Searching on the forum I found the solution, recalibration (Master, 8 -special, 3).
Here my second lesson: master 8 becomes your best friend when repairing an EIII eheh ;) .
After recalibration I verified ram and channels were ok, so I loaded again the sample and surprise!! The EIII was playing notes!!

Of course that was not enough, another issue now: after having moved cables, connectors, pulled out boards more times, now when I press "master" or another one of the buttons in the first row ("management", "setup", "edit" ..etc etc), the selected functions appears on the lcd for a while but it turn back to the previous state.
After a check I noticed the connector of the 60 pin cable from the controller board was a little bit unstable, so I replaced it.
Powered up the system...ta-da! I can surf again between all the functions of the sampler.
Here my third lesson: connectors and cables in the EIII, as stated more and more also from Dr. C, are often the reason of a bad EIII.

Unfortunately no way to replace the IDC transition connector :( I contacted Digikey also but..no way, they don't have these connectors anymore in the store. It seems transition connectors are a sort of vintage stuff today ;) Nevermind...

Then some other issues: not every time I powered up the system it booted correctly and once powered after some minute the system freezed.
Searching again on the forum I found a possible solution: power supply not calibrated.
I followed the procedure explained by Dr. C and dvdborn and calibrated the power supply to the correct voltage (yellow line at 5,05V, before was 4,78V).
After the calibration every time I power up the system boots now without problems ;)
Now I have my EIII almost completely operational..to be a perfect EIII I just have to clean some key and replace some button on the frontpanel!

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At the end, as a resume, the important works I did on my EIII had been:
1) To put an hd inside the system.
2) Recalibrate all the controls and sliders.
3) Crimp a new IDC connector to the 60 pin cable coming from frontpanel.
4) Recalibrate the power supply.
5) Lot of coffee and patience ;)

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I just would to focus these points to keep in mind when repairing something precious:
1) Never forget that all the infos to restore an Emulator are here, is only a reason to search with the right words ;) That's what I did.
2) Never loose hope...all is repairable, of course if not seriously compromised...i.e. if a pal or the f-chip is fried...in that case you have to be lucky to find a donor.
3) Never loose confidence or conviction that you can do it ;)
4) Don't be in a hurry, do things slowly, take your time to check more and more. ;)

What to say?
Thanks to all the people contributed here explaining his problems and finding/giving solutions to others.
Without all this share, a lot of emus would be dead and unused.
I hope my little contribution will help someone.

Special thanks to esynthesist, Dr. c, ddvdave, lubb, midipuppies, dvdborn and all the others made my restoration happened...

Patrizio

Ps: Really sorry for my scholastic english... :(

Hi Patrizio,

Great to read that you were able to restore your EIII.
I'm sure that you'll also need these skills later on. EIII units continue to need a lot of care.
But it sure pays off. They sound great.

David

Nice job !
Don't forget, when you finish formating a disk, just go to "Save benk" and "Save". Just "Save", don't bother what, but this will allow to make a new directory. Its a bug from E-Mu.