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

Hi all,I have an Emu II + HD which has been serviced and had its power supply overhauled in the past and was all working great.
One day I switched it on and it booted up ok but started to crash and lock up so I switched it off and back on and it powered up again but the lcd was now starting to fade which made me think power supply issues again.
I switched it off and back on and now it just says the usual booting and attempts to boot from the hard drive but never finishes its boot sequence just sits there booting.
I have tried to boot from the floppy drive but it trys to read the disk,led lights up in the floppy but does not load.

Does my EMU sound really screwed?
Please help,
Best regards,
Sneakyalien.

Sounds like you should have sold it to me when you had the chance instead of blocking my bids on Ebay..... :-\ (John in Preston).

I'm surprised JW has not been able to sort this for you. Mine also had a PSU issue but he was able to tweak it to get the drives working and booting and has been fine ever since, maybe it's a different issue when involving a HD.

I know someone else with a +HD in Edinburgh who has had his serviced by someone else and is still working fine... I could try to find out who this was although it could mean you have a trip up to Scotland.

There was a US +HD PSU on Ebay yesterday with shipping to UK but 'think' it may have sold... presume you missed it... May have been usable with step down transformer if still available.         

Is the hard disk spinning ?

Hi,I went to synth repair today and poor James spent 6 hours on it trying to get it going,when the emu is switched on the floppy drive led illuminates and then the hard drive kicks in,the hard drive led starts to flash and the disk spins up to speed and sounds like it is going to boot;All the hard disk noises you expect start to happen and then it just stops,a message appears in the lcd of booting as you would expect then after the hard drive led goes out a message of HD MiniS 20 R2.6 appears in the lcd.
If I try to boot without a floppy in I get a mesage of 'insert floppy' then if i insert a floppy i get the message of 'HD Minis 20 R2.6' and again the system just hangs.
James checked all the various voltages from the power supply and they are fine and he said there are no ripples of voltage so he has ruled out psu issues,James also checked all the memory using some diagnostic software on floppy and the floppy drive read the diagnostic disk and checked all the memory which was all good.
James swapped over the digital board,scsci controller,roms etc and still the same problem.
To me it seems as though the operating system has become corrupt on the hard drive and it gets so far trying to boot but then just hangs.Is there any way to force a boot off the floppy?

I don't know what else to do with it,don't know if the hard drive is screwed or if it just needs reformatting and a new op system installed,thats if you can format it.Any one have any ideas.

Cheers,
Steve.

Few possibilities :

The hard disk is dead.
The software is screwed
The scratchpas memory is bad.

Scratchpade memory is a part of the sampel memeory used for system managent.

When you open the machine, look at the right, you will see the rams. If you have a piggyback card, take it away, take away the first four columns of memories and change them with the ones one the piggiback, take the piggyback ones and put them on the board.
This means you will have now exchanged some ram circuits and if some of these are dead, il will be audibkle instead of screwing the system.
Be carefull that the pins are not bent when you put back the rams in place..

Reboot and tell me what happens.

Hi Dr.C,
I have just sent an email to you with two pictures of the insides of my emulator II-I cannot see a piggy back card you mention.
Thanks,
Steve

hi Dr.C,
I think I found the memory chips and removedthe first four colums and replaced them with the remaining mem chips off the board and rebooted,exactly the same problem occurred.
Just been reading up on emulator archive and according to the documentation on the hard disk the emu should boot from the floppy drive if there is a disk in the floppy drive but this does not boot from the floppy it always tries to boot from the hard disk.
Thanks,
Steve.

Let me think a bit...

Hi Dr.c,
what versions of the main boot eprom and scanner eprom should be in a emu II+hd with a digital board that has the following text as to what rev number it is 'Emulator 2 digital board 1984 emu systems artwork rev 1'
there is also lettering refering to eco level a b c d e f and f is greyed out.
Thanks for your time,
Steve.

I'll be damned if I know !

I have modified ONE E2 with the hard disk, and then I sent back all the other kits to factory (11 left) when I saw the disaster.
The point was that our clients were in studio, they were, for example, Depeche-Mode, Rod Stewart, Vangelis, etc... and there was NO WAY that their machine would suffer any problem of any kind, in studio or on stage.
Anyway, it was so hard to get the right infos from Santa-Cruz (after then, Scotts Valley) that I dropped it. We were using the E2 as it was, and "basta".
Same thing for the E-Max.

W O W ! ! !

Dr. C - would you mind letting us know more about you and your affiliation to all this E-Mu Stuff? Why you're such an expert, how comes, etc.?
I'm really curious...  give us some biography!  :)

Geee... my fingers slipped on the keyboard...

Okay... Been working, starting from scratch at 18 in the weapon and military industry in the 70's (France was the third weapon dealer in the world at this time).
I stopped working with these people in 82, I was at this time working for tactical nuclear forces.
Found by a frien an employment of service manager in a company called Music-Land, in Paris, wich was distributing E-Mu, PPG, Oberheim, Kurzweil, Simmons, MPC, and so many other brands.
Our clients were a lot of young and unknown people, but as well people like Stevie Wonder, Prince, Toto, Herbie Hancock, just name it, hundreds of them !
It seems to be very impressive but let's not forget something : someone had to do this job, and it just happened to be me. I am not playing the "false modest man", its just a matter of chance, and then, after, a matter of doing my job correctly.

"Easy come, easy go !" In this business, one's reputation may be distroyed in a minute if he messes around, so, let's never take ourself seriously (I mean, playing the important man).

Hi Dr.C,
I have been thinking about the problem with my emulator and it seems it does not want to boot from the floppy drive or the hard drive-could this be an issue with the disk controller board?I don't know if the floppy drive is controlled by this board-to be honest I am totally clutching at straws now.Thinking of sending it to synthservices in London.Has any one had any dealings with Synthservices.James at synth repair services has had a look at it but James is mad busy at the moment to devote any real time to it.
Thanks,
Steve.

Where are you located ?

No - the floppy is controlled by the main CPU, CTC, SIO and PIO chips - very unusually the EII doesn't have a floppy controller chip such as WD1770 - it's all handled discretely!!  All of these devices are found on the main right hand digital pcb mounted directly to the metal base plate.

I have both the service and diagnostics manual for EII.   Not booting is covered in the diagnostics manual.

The most likely problem is that there is a poor connection somewhere.  The EII is wall to wall TTL chips mounted in IC sockets.   As the instrument ages the sockets and IC pins oxidise and suffer from poor contacts.  This is the main reason why the EII doesn't like to be moved.  

My EII stopped sampling yesterday - the VU meter just showed noise - I started to panic a little but after reseating several chips in their sockets the problem went away.

One thing that can stop EII booting from any source is indeed duff lower memory - hence why it was suggested you swap the memory over.

It might be worth checking that all of your supply rails are running to spec too.

Be careful poking around EII when powered - I got a belt off mine yesterday when I accidentally touched the metal ring on the side of the main fuse holder on the rear panel - and it was a heck of a belt too as we're on 240 volts here!!   ???

Thanks for the replies,I will check some of the connections and cables etc.
I am starting to think this beast is screwed but I can't even think about sending her to the grave yard so i will keep at it until I get her working.
Thanks everyone for trying to help it is appreciated. X

Hi Dr C.I am based in Preston Lancashire.

Far from Paris...

One thing that really has me confused with the issues with my Emu is the Emu floppy drive will read and run the memory diagnostic disk and all the memory looks ok.
Does this mean the floppy drive and related electronics that controls the floppy is ok?
Does it also mean the boot eprom is ok?
Thanks
Steve.

This sounds odd - it means that much of your EII is working fine.   Are you sure your boot disk is OK??   You do have a bootable floppy with a system on it?

Are you sure it's not just a case of your HD going dead and your trying to boot off a floppy with no valid system on it?

Hi,yes I have been feeding the Emu floppy disks and have tried about 50 different disks that I know the emu used to boot from.
I do seem to remember that just before the emu died the floppy drive would not load disks it would get so far but not load them-when I put a floppy disk in now the heads dont move,the disk spins and the floppy led lights but I don't see the head move.
This has got me puzzled,its interesting though because I am learning loads about how this thing works which is good.
I am sure with all the advise it will become a functioning beast again.
Thanks,
Steve.

Hi all,
I have just found a disk I bought from emulator archive and its an Emulator 3.1 HD operating system disk.
Here is what happens when I switch my Emu on with a floppy disk operating 31 system in the floppy drive:-

1) press power on switch-message of 'boot in progress' appears in lcd and you can hear hard disk spinning up to speed.

2  a message of 'Hard disk 20 3.1' is displayed in lcd(this message changes depending upon which floppy disk operating system is in the drive so if i put a 2.6 op system floppy in the drive  it will display 2.6 in the lcd.

3  hard drive makes the usual noises but not for as long as it should do during a normal boot from the hard drive-after about 3 grunts the led on the hard drive stops.

4) led just stays illuminated on the floppy drive and no sound is emmited from the floppy drive because i don't think the read write heads are moving in the drive.

5) system just stays in that state.

If I try to boot without a floppy disk in the drive what happens is this:-

1) power on-message of 'boot in progress' in lcd,you can hear the hard drive grunting away as usual but again only for a short time , a message of insert diskette is displayed in the lcd and as soon as i put a diskette in a message of hard disk 20. 3.1 appears in the lcd this message changes depending upon which diskette I put in so if an 2.6 op system disk is put in it will display 2.6 in the lcd.

I am know utterly confused as to what is going on with this machine because it seems the floppy drive is reading some info off the floppy disk.

Does the above mean the scanner eprom and associated circuitry is ok-could it be a problem with the boot eprom?I have version 2.1 boot eprom on the board.

thanks for your help guys.
Steve.