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

I finally bought an EII on Ebay. Now I wonder if the unit has been damaged during shipping:
I need someone to explain how the EII should behave when first powered on. I followed the instruction by first powering on and then inserting the floppy and turning the handle, i.e. enganging the drive. The drive spins but nothing more happens... The display is not showing any progress message..
If I just power on the EII and press any of the buttons on the different modules there is no response from the buttons. Is this normal?

When I received the EII it had been quite battered during the shipping. A few of the keys had broken off. It was packed poorly by the seller *sigh*
I have opened it and I see there are four IC sockets without IC in them. These are IC number 134, 139, 149 and 151. Is this normal in a standard Emulator II?

Help appreciated!
Ole

Based on my experience, I would expect any EII shipped not to work at first.  These are very temperamental beasts.  Don't be discouraged though.  In a year or so you'll have it purring like a kitten. :'(


Ok, sorry to poke fun.   :)  There are many people here who know much more than I, but here's my input:

1. There are empty sockets in mine.  Do a search on google for EII images and you'll see what I'm talking about.
2. You should probably re-seat all of the ICs.  Don't pull them all the way out though, or you'll bend pins like I did.  Just pull them halfway out and push them back in
3. Check the power supply
4. I would bet that at least one or two of your memory chips are bad

Most importantly, read as many of the posts here as you can.  There is a lot of good information to be found.

Thanks for your input.

I have now reseated all 150+ IC's..... And pulled out my old oscilloscope to check that the PSU is delivering stable +5, +15 and -15 volts = OK. But the EII behaves the same; no response when pressing any of the front buttons, display only says: insert Diskette.
All lights light up briefly on powerup.
I also disconnected power and cables to the floppydiscs, but still no improvement.

Is there aservicemanual with help on faultfinding? Edit: I found it.

What are the typical electrical faults when Emulator II's are shipped?

Do you have a disk for the EII at all? Insert Diskette means it needs the disk with the OS. Without it won't work.

Hi,
I got two disks with the machine. They are marked with Orch Hit and Preset 01/01 Pan Pipes. Do I need a special OS disk?

I forgot to tell: a few of the keyboardkeys had broken off and the springs had got under the Digital-board, shortcircuiting down to the chassis before I got them out. I reconed that those shortcircuits would not kill any of the ICs there, but maybe I am wrong?

What happens when you insert those disks? Normally it should boot. If not, i would firstly suggest the disk drive to be bad.The upper drive (does it have two?) should be the main one.

When I insert a disk the display goes from saying Insert Diskette to "insert Diskette, Software Rev. 2.3" the drive LED lights up, theres the buzzing sound from the drive but nothing more happens..

It has two drives. The drives was shipped with the floppys inside the drives. Perhaps the floppies have gone bad. Ive tried every combination of drives / floppies..

Have you asked the seller if it was booting from those disks before? I would assume it wasn't because it seems to be the wrong software revision. I think you will have to get a Rev 2.3 OS.

Looking inside the EII there are two ICs with labels on them saying "E2 Mainboot 2.1" and "E2Scanner 2.1". On the back it says Model 6028, Serial no 1180.

I just just got confirmation from the seller that he had booted from these floppies.

I measured the power going to the floppydrive with a multimeter. The orange cable that is supposed to deliver 12 volts (to the floppydrives) I measure to be 14 volts (this should be 12 volts) I measured this with the powercables not connected to the floppydrives. On the 5volt line (yellow) I measure to be 5.2 volts. Could this be a problem?

It can. If the floppy is working correct and the disk is broke it should at least write "disk error". It is okay that the disk have been inserted while being transported. That is to protect the drive heads. I would try cleaning the heads anyway. Isopropanol from the pharmacy and a q-tip will be ok for this.

Hello razo,

did you check the ribbon cable?
Remove it from the floppy and put it back. Same on the PCB connection.

I've now cleaned the heads with isopropanol and cleand all the connectors, but still the same.

A friend of mine said the heads on the floppydrives might have been misaligned, as he said the 5.25" drives are more sensitive the 3.5" drives. I remember I bought two of those Commodore 1541-II 5.25" floppydrives for my E-mu SP-12, but none of them worked when I received them after shipping either (They were working when they were sent).  So I suspect the same might have happened to the drives on this EII.

Btw, the guy that sold the drives for the SP-12 said there were a DOS(?) program that could be used to re-align the heads on the drives, but I never tried that out. Perhaps there is a similar program for the EII to re-align the heads...

This might be a bad idea because it introduces yet another variable, but you may want to try an HXC floppy emulator.  You'll probably end up getting one anyways.

Okay... The worse thing is : "A friend said you should try this..." etc... Stop everything.
First, the disks in the floppies were to protect the heads during transport.
On a "sane machine" a message "Insert disquette"  should appear and the diode should blink. Just this. If not, it means your machine is down.

Please to all : I propose that we make a new discussion, restarting everything from zero. Make a new discussion and send me a message, there are too many things there.

Just an update on this: the EII is now working. I installed a HxC instead of the 5.25". It seems that the original floppydrives are very sensitive to shipping..