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

ON EDIT --  May 20, 2009

I'm revising my original title and post to relflect where this issue is today:

If I connect my EIII keyboard to an old Mac, several of the LEDs on the front light up, even though there is no power provided to the EIII.  Additionally there appears to be a little bit of power being applied to the LCD.

The macs I have tested are

-- SE
-- SE/30
-- Color Classic
-- PowerMac 7100

They all cause the EIII to "light up"

If it matters, it is one of the early 4MB EIII's

I did recently change the internal hard drive, I cannot remember if it did this before I did that, as it was in storage for a couple years (I KNOW -- why in the world did I cut myself off from it that way).

Any idea what is going on and how I can fix it?

-------------------------------------------------

OLD POST

If I connect my EIII keyboard to an external scsi disk (all old ones from the classic Mac days) or to an old Mac, several of the LEDs on the front light up, even though there is no power provided to the EIII.

If it matters, it is one of the early 4MB ones. 

I did recently change the internal hard drive, I cannot remember if it did this before I did that, as it was in storage for a couple years (I KNOW -- why in the world did I cut myself off from it that way).

Any idea what is going on and how I can fix it?

Your external hard disk is providing +5V by the pin 26 of the SCSI plug, wich is TREMPWR (Treminator power)

DISCONNECT IMMEDIATELY, URGENT   URGENT   URGENT   URGENT   URGENT   URGENT   URGENT   URGENT   URGENT   URGENT   URGENT   URGENT   URGENT   URGENT   URGENT 

OPEN THE CASE OF YOUR EXTERNAL HARD DISK AND PUT THE JUMPERS AS TRMPWR OFF

If you don't know how, tell wich king of disk (brand, model) or better, put here the link to load the configuration manual and I will tell you how to do this.

dr.c:

Thanks for the reply -- I should be able to figure that out for the external drives.

However - what about the Mac?  Do you think that is the drive or is it something on the motherboard I have to tackle.

(I did not power up the EIII when this happened so I think everything is OK>

I am beginning to wonder if it is something inside the EIII.

I have tried:

-- Mac 7100
-- Mac 8100
-- Mac Color Classic
-- Mac SE/30

and they all cause the unpowered EIII to "light up."

I am only connecting momentarily.

What do you think?

Did you try to power the EIII ?

I don't like this...

If you are familiar with opening machines, check if the LARGE flat cable ON TOP of the machine, coming from the left side and going to the second board of the card cage (processor) has no trace of heat.

Let me think a bit... I don't know... it "rings a bell", these diodes... I would have to ma a course here about SCSI ans termination, but it would take me hours.

Yes I have opened this EIII a couple times, and the one I had before too.  I may not be able to do it for a couple of days because I like to have a block of time which I will not be interrupted.

I understand the basics of SCSI termination as I worked with Mac and SCSI drives since about '87.

I will dig into the EIII manual section on SCSI as it may have some info I have overlooked.

====

As to the "new" drive I put in a little while ago, I terminated it.

If it was unterminated, the EIII won't start up (at least mine won't).

I put in a Quantum 700MB Trailblazer - Apple branded, model TR70S026 Rev 01 - A S043C.  I set it to ID2, which was how the original 40mb internal was set up.

THANKS for your help -- if anything occurs to you, let me know.

I called a friend (this came back to me, I remember I fixed his machine about 15 years ago) and he said to me that his machine was doing this and he never had problems !

You wrote :

"I put in a Quantum 700MB Trailblazer - Apple branded, model TR70S026 Rev 01 - A S043C.  I set it to ID2, which was how the original 40mb internal was set up."

This is the internal disk ? Because just before, you wrote :

"As to the "new" drive I put in a little while ago, I terminated it.
If it was unterminated, the EIII won't start up (at least mine won't)."


I don't care about your internal disk !  ;D

WICH disk is doing problems with diodes ?

Troubleshooting Summary:

-- Disk issue appears to be resolved.
-- Mac issue is not resolved

--

It appears that I can trace the diodes lighting up when disk attached to a particular style/brand of external drive case.

Drives that are in other cases do not cause the diodes to light.  Drives in those cases do.

Furthermore, an empty case causes the diodes to light.

These are APS brand external cases, a US company that went out of business around the time Apple dropped SCSI.

They appear to work fine with my EIIIx as well as my Roland sampler from the same era. 

Here is my guess -- the cases feature a switchable active termination.  Even though I have the switch off, it must be supplying some low level power. 

----
 :(  BUT IT IS STILL HAPPENING with the Macs!?

Tonight I tested with a Mac SE.  Same thing. 

I would really like to work this out as I was looking forward to some retro sample editing!  You know I cannot find any mention of tech support on the emu site anymore.

====

Turns out I only have one of the EIII manuals, not the hardware one.  I am going to see if maybe emulatorarchive has it.

Thanks for thinking about this. Let me know if something comes to mind.

Here is my guess -- the cases feature a switchable active termination.  Even though I have the switch off, it must be supplying some low level power.

Maybe also a bad ground, floating potential. Be carefull !
====


But, finaly, is it working, with lighten diodes or not ?

It works with external hard drives if I use the right external case.  :)

It does not work with Macs.  :( ??? :(

This is a shame because I would like to edit samples on the Mac.

I am going to change the title:

SCSI Trouble -- unpowered EIII lights up when connected to a Macintosh

Surely there are people here who have successfully connected EIII's to macs?

I did write e-mu tech support but I doubt I will ever hear from them on this.

What you can try :

The SCSI should normaly be a 50 wire one, with centronics connector.

The Power termination is wire 26. Try to make a cable extension with a male and female connector, and cut the wire 26, this will cut off the PWRTRM.

If you are going from the mac to a hard disk, it should be from a 35 pin connector to a 50 pin. After then, going from the disk to the EMU. This cable can be made with two CENTRONICS connectors and flat cable. I will make a picture tomorrow, its late here now (22:00). Cheers

dr.C - thanks I look forward to the pictures.

Digging around in my box of treasures, I do have several flat SCSI cables.

I will need to find some Centronics connectors for this adaptor as I don't have those.

I wonder also -- with a standard 25 to 50 pin scsi cable, maybe it is possible to remove one of the male pins on the 25 pin side?  Does that make any sense?

Yes, but if it dooesn't work, you won't be able to step back !!!

Prudence, first !!

That might not be the end of the world as I have several of those cables.

However I realize that I have a couple of external cases with dead power supplies.  Those contain

50 pin female centronics ----> flat ribbon cable -----> 50 pin female centronics.  

Perfect for this extention cable.  Now if I can figure out which is wire 26.  I will pull one of this tomorrow, take a picture and post it up.

ON EDIT - ok I see that one edge of the ribbon cable is marked in RED.  Is this wire 1 or wire 50?

On a WELL DONE cable, pin 1 is the red cable.

SUCCESS!  :)

I dismantled the old hard drive case (containing broken optical drive) and removed the centronic female ---> 50 pin flat --> centronic female cable.

After counting the wires to 26 several times, I finally cut the wire with an exacto knife.

I then hooked up everything and was able to transfer sounds back and forth between my EIII and the Mac 7100.  There are a few little kinks to work out with the programs (operator error maybe) but all in all it looks good.

This is going to be fun!

THANKS so much for your help with this.

Damned, I misssed that one ! I wanted you to put fire to your EIII !!!   ;D

Just thinking about that makes me cry!

The software quirks I worked out - most of them were operator error.

I am liking the EIII remote program more than I thought I would.  How fun!

There are some hardware quirks -- EIII has to be powered on first, then mac.   Additionally Mac does not like being hooked up to an unpowered EIII, say if I am going to work on something else.  So I have to unhook the scsi cable or it will hang at startup.  However, as I say if the EIII is on, the Mac is happy.

It would be nice to use the built-in CDROM of the mac to load Emu CD's but the mac complains and just ejects them.  There may be a solution for that.

I am using a 7100 with an Audiomedia II nubus.  I am going to try it with an 8100 because the tower would be more convenient down under the desk.

Thanks again for the help -- sorry I could not catch it on fire!

It would be nice to use the built-in CDROM of the mac to load Emu CD's but the mac complains and just ejects them.  There may be a solution for that.

Wich system are you using on the Mac ?

What is the format of the CD's ?

Have you got "Cd-Rom Toolkit" ? I can send it somewhere !

I am using 8.1 on the 7100 and 8.5 on the 8100.

CD's are EMU EIII/EIIIx format.

I do have CD-ROM Toolkit somewhere -- I will look for it and see it that helps me!

Welll, I'm not sure it will, I believe it was on system 7.

One thing, by the way : in a disk enclosure, the flat cable (data) goes from one connector to the disk and then, back to the second connector.
This means that you may have one connector wich will be PWRTERM and the other not if you cut its cable #26.

So, if you hook your mac to the the connector where the cable 26 is not cut, and the emu to where the cable is cut, everyone is going to work, the mac will work wether if the emu will be powererd or not. Its makes sense to me, and let me know.
If you don't "get it", I will make you a diagram.

I think I have a version of CDT that worked with 8 or 8.5 around somewhere.

I am not sure about how that would work with this SCSI "adaptor".  What I have is

CENTRONICS 50 female <----(cut 26)--- "internal" 50 pin black connector for internal HD --- "uncut" 26 ---- > female Centronics 50


I connect this between MAC 25 -------> 50 male ----> (ADAPTOR)  <50 male -------  25 male --- EIII.

So I think this means that the PWRTERM is effectively cut for both the mac and EIII, since nothing is connected to the "internal" black connector in the middle. 

Does that make sense?

Seems to be okay