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

Hi,

I have:

EII Logic Board Rev 1.0 (scanner 3.1, main EPROM 2.1. OS 3.1) and Apple
SE 1/40 running SD. My service people did all the required changes
inside accordingly to the SD troubleshooting for Rev 1.0 including the
point Nr.3:

"If you do not have AT LEAST VERSION 2.3 of Emulator II OS software,
then the following mod must be performed: Lift pin 22 of IC107 and
solder one end of a 1Kohm 1/4watt 5% resistor to it. Solder the other
end of the resistor to +5 volts DC anywhere nearby."

Unfortunately SD does not communicate with EII at all.

Can this point 3 cause the problem with newer OS?

I have another EII Rev 0.10 with added daughterboard. It is now broken
(some voices did not play and now it does not boot). The cable and Mac
worked OK with this second EII before.

Does anybody has any tips?

Tom

Hi Tom, I'm pretty sure this matches my EII and I got a Mac SE to work fine with mine without making any modifications to the EII. Did you try switching the cable between the modem and printer ports on the Mac and/or switching the mode within Sound Designer to/from Panel mode? 

Hi,

Did you ever communicate with a Mac with this machine, regardless of the software, firmware, etc.. or did you try ? Is it a machine you bought second hand ?

I am thinking about the interface circuits, I mean the buffer circuits wich are right before the In/Out plug, 1488 and 1489, IC108 and IC132. I was changing them immediately.
Change as well the 4070N, IC131. Its the SMPTE interface input, and, strangely, if it was dead, or locked in a "strange state" at boot-up, the Mac interface wouldn't work.

The resistor to be put is apparently what we call a "pull-up" resistor. But, if I may, the people who made the modification didn't try if it works ? This is strange...

Yes I tried both Mac ports. Since my EII did not communicate with Mac, I decided to ask the service to make the adjustments as described in the troubleshooting guide. Unfortunately with no results :(

Is it possible to use sound designer and EII with Mac Performa (My friend has one) ?

According to the Yahoo EII Users site, the Mac Performa 5200 and 575 are compatible.

No prob, it won't be the E2 in cause, but the software on a mac.

I had Alchemy 3.0 (very funny to find this one at some places, I am the one who made this 3.0 mod) working with an E2 with a beige G3 !!!!

The results of the last tests:

There are no data on the Mac output when playing the MIDI keyboard in Sound Designer or just clicking with mouse on the EII remote panel in the SD or trying to communicate with connected EII. I am affraid that the problem is in Mac. When I am playing the EII keyboard some data are sent on the EII´s computer connector. The Mac also does not communicate with my Kurzweil K250RMX (but it never did).

Concerning my second EII that used to communicate with Mac and which is now broken ("boot in progress" but any reaction of the floppy drives). It looks like the problem is in communication between main CPU an PIO chips. There might be some cut lines. My service is now looking for the problem around these chips. I hope they´ll find it.

Tom

First EII: Change the mac, get someone lend you one !

Second EII :

You say it stops at "Boot in progress". Does it give three clicks with the drive before ?

Tac, Tac, Tac, "Boot in progress".

1st EII: I´ll probably have to buy another Mac on eBay (friend of mine used to have Performa but as he told me he does not have it anymore). It is quite hard to find these old Macs here in Prague. Most of the Macs are G3 and newer here. btw which one would be the best and fastest one for EII?

2nd EII: No Tac, Tac, Tac ;) The disk did not start to work at all. I had to remove the disk, then put it in again and close the drive to make it do something with the disk. But it rotate the disk only no attempt to read anything. The software is obviously not able to ask for the disk. We measured accordingly to the service manual the CPU and PIO chips and there is a square signal that is described in the manual as a problem between the main CPU and PIO. 

Okay... stop everything, read carefully.

Open the machine.
Dismount the power supply.
I am ready to bet that the connector with the wires is brown where the yellow wire is.
You have to clean it.
After the, you have to take the solder away from the connector on the solder side of the power supply, clean this, and put new solder.
Clean the pins of the connector
Put everything back in place, don't forget to put the two wires of the power supply voltage selector in place in the power supply board.

50% chances it works.

Don't say "Naaa", just TRY it !

OK thanks, I´ll try to do it.

Why not try it with the power supply of your other EII (the one which doesn't boot) ?

To be honest, I would prefer to have at least one working EII ... ;)

DON'T SWAP POWER SUPPLIES AROUND !!!
There are different models !

Just modify the machine wich is not working !

OK I´m going to modify the broken one ;)

Ohh, okay. Didn't know that
Can I recognize if two PSUs are the same model, just from their looks? I also have two EIIs, that's why I'd like to know.

I don´t know. They seems to look same. But the first EII has the older board with memory piggy board on it and the second one is the newer revision.

Anyway the new Mac SE1/40 is on the way from Germany and probably on thursday evening I´ll see if the power supply was the cause of the problem. I called my service guy today and he told me that he was unable to meassure any voltage on several pins of the power connectors comming from power supply  to both left and right mother boards.

Unfortunately there is no scheme of the poweer supply in my service manual so we do not know exactly what to meassure.

I also have one EII with a piggyback board, and the other one with a rev 1, without piggyback...

AND I also have two macintosh SE, excellent for EII communication..

There is a revision number on the sticker of the power supply wich is on the transformer.
As well, sometimes, the harness of wires going to the board is not the same, depending of wich model.
You've got a working machine, so don't mess around with it !

I completely forgot about this little piggyback board and I wonder from wich software it starts working !!!! I can't remember (its about 20 years ago now) but it seems that maybe the Eproms and/or the software had to be updated if we had to install the piggyback board for the communication !

If there is a piggyback board, just check if its well in place.

Hi,

unfortunately 50% chance that it does not work has occured. The connector and everything around was checked, cleaned, soldered again. No result.  :'(

I think I have installed about 25 of these boards and I had 1 or 2 not working, directly from factory.

Can you note the reference of the circuits of the piggyback board and put it here ?

Do you mean the memory board or the RS422 board?

New Mac SE just arrived. The working EII does not communicate. So there is no problem with the Mac :( I´ll try to replace all 3 chips as suggested. If it not works, I´ll be probably selling the EII and looking for one with the working RS422 communication.

Make a damn picture of this fucking board !

Its not memory chip !

If you received a Mac SE NOT communicationg with a WORKING EII, it's the Mac, wich is faulty, don't you think ?

Didi you turn Appletalk on ?

...and with reference to an earlier message of mine:

Did you try switching the mode within Sound Designer to/from Panel mode?

The EII shows/makes no connection activity until you switch Sound Designer to panel mode, when you have, the EII will then read addiitonal data from the 5.25" OS disk you have inserted. I'm hoping you have done this easily overlooked issue before your more technical considerations.... :-\   

I trust you have also 'actually' tried to send a sound bank to the EII within panel mode? Sorry to ask such a simple thing, but I have used Mac SE's with no problems and with NO modifications made to the EII whatsoever - Your EII spec appears almost identical to mine. 

I think it is becoming confusing a little bit.

Summary:

EII Nr.1 (fully working machine)

- Logic Board Rev 1.0 (scanner 3.1, main EPROM 2.1. OS 3.1, 5,25 and 3,5 floppy drives),
- no piggy boards inside
- bought second hand, never worked with Apple
- I have 2 Macs (SE 4MbRAM, SE1/40 1 Mb RAM), neither of them communicate with this EII (tried both ports modem, printer)
- Apple has activated Apple Talk
- Both Macs tested in EII panel mode (the answer is still the same "I can not communicate with EII, check the cable and current preset has MIDI on")
- Cable is bought from a guy from Emulator forum at yahoo, cable tested, there is no problem
- MIDI is on
- all adjustments as described in the SD troubleshooting guide for boards rev 1.0 done (with no results)
- I tried to switch the EII "Under control of Macintosh" manually in the Catalogue menu, still no result


EII Nr. 2 (used to work with SD, now broken)

- Logic Board Rev 0.1 (scanner 3.1, main EPROM 2.1. OS 3.1, 2x 5,25 floppy drives),
- RS422 piggy board inside
- memory expansion piggy board inside
- used to work with SD with no problems with the same cable and same Apple SE 1/40 as above
- about 1 year ago some voices missed, later can not boot from the disk (no tac, tac, tac at the beginning)
- we checked the power supply and its connectors (as recommended), did not help

Pictures of both boards will be sent on Saturday

Further steps I am going to do:

EII Nr.1 - replace communication chips 1488 and 1489, IC108 and IC132 + 4070N, IC131. (I´ve just got the first two, the third one will come from the EII Nr.2)


EII Nr.2 - checking the connections between main CPU an PIO chips

Although I might get trouble with DR. C, I would just take the output board (missing voices), as well as the floppy drives from #1 and put them into #2.

By the way: A good idea may also be to reseat ALL ICs of the machine. I also had dead voices and other trouble - after I reseated all ICs, everything worked again.

I´ve already tried to change the drives no result.
I´ve also cleaned all ICs and connectors in EII Nr.2 also no result.
If there are just missing voices I can use Nr.2 as a SD-Mac working environment and use the floppies in Nr.1. So the task is to make Nr.2 boot.

THIS is absolutely perfect ! If you have (or someone else) has the wiring of the connector, I can draw you the diagram of a little adapter with LEDs wich will lit everytime there is a communication !
It will be absolutely harmless, and very usefull !





NOOOOO !!!! Please, do niot mess around with chips, for heaven's sake ! You will only get TWO non working machines !!!!


Take care of one machine at the time, get the connection diagram, I will check everything and send here the diagrame for the LED probe.
One step after each other, take your taime, you cannot afford to hurry and mess around !

As well : I am sorry if I seem a bit "directive" and even sometimes coleric, but I love my job and I just had an EIII wich has been completely ruined by its owner, telling me "I tought I could do this !"
I told him : "No one ask you to "think", stop "thinking".

In two words, I told him to SHUT his machine IMMEDIATELY, to bring it over, there was a screw hanging aroung. He shaked it and put the power on. Idiot...

I'm not a bad guy ...        ;)

Sometimes, as well, it will display "This will take a while" and sits there for years.

This is TYPICAL of a power supply connector problem. Look at the molex connector distributing power to the boards, you will see that the connector will be brown on the yellow wires (+5V)

Take the power supply away, take off the old crackeled and cooked solder of the Molex connector, resolder, clean the female connector (the one with the wires), put everything back,  eight chances over ten that it will work.

Yes, this is perfectly correct, especially with the S352 chips. Gee... its 25 years ago and I still remember that shit... ;D

I know :) It is OK I am happy having any suggestions or directions ;)

Okay... One machine at a time for the topic here I mean

Lets call them machine "A" and machine "B", ok ?

Machine "A" is a rev 0 with a little board near the RS232 board, not communicating with the Mac.

I need the electric diagram of the 9 pin connector, I mean, WE nedd it !!!

Look at the board and tell me please wich is the name of the conncetor, you should see this written on the board in white, what we call the silkscreen, I found the diagrams !

Please do not continue in this topic, there are two new topics open each for one EII :)

Okay !!!