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

and picking up a II+ next week (again.) sold mine january 2007. And i never slept another night ;)

Finally found a decent one!

I like to make it a nice part of my live setup when doing big gigs.

I also have a couple of those magazines/newsletters from emu. and a couple of old floppies. IS there a exchange going on? I will see, or I will create one.

like to hear from tips tricks and sounds!

Cheers Zom

Welcome (back) Zom !

So finally you have another EII - remember I'm the one that bought your previous one up in 2007 :)

But using it in big live gigs seems kind of a risk to me. On the other hand... you may remember that my (your) EII+ fell of a chair in my studio when I was checking why the second floppy drive was not working well. At first I was in panic of course, but then I was surprised to see that after falling on the ground, the floppy drive worked 100% fine again (up to today) and all key contacts worked fine again also.
So perhaps your new EII+ could benefit of some rough handling on gigs too :)
Still... I think I was very lucky and I would never use it on gigs...

Your question to exchange floppy disks is perhaps somewhat outdated because most EII users probably are exchanging SoundDesigner files in an electronic way now. I don't know about a group for this though. I guess most people succeeded in getting a copy of the Emu factory banks and/or the OMI CDROMs in SD format, so except for user-made sound banks there's probably not a lot to exchange anymore.
Note that OMI Volumes 1 and 2 can be legally bought for about 75 USD each (that's 1000 banks !) and a big selection has been made by Rob from emulatorarchive too and he's selling it for an even lower price.

You newsletters may be very interesting to some of us (including me). These ones are hard to find today.

Good luck with your new EII+ !

///E-Synthesist

Hehe long time indeed,
it was you and what a story on the Eii I sold you.

I know it is a dinosaur and i'm reading lots of painfull stories about rusty sockets and so on. But it is also built like a tank.

Only big gigs, and i like to show of with this thing. I kept my oberheim and use 3,5" and a fem 5,25 floppy's on it, and it still hits everyting through the mix.

my plan is to set up my krzwl k2500rs and emu 5000 including synthax drives as the source. I am trying to get an oberheim master key - dektop - vintage thing. You had the strummer, the drummer, cyclone etc. One of them has masterkeyboard functions.

Thank you all for the welcom e package. A lot happened since the beginning of 2007 within the EII community ;)
 
Reading about the software you wrote and the former service engineer from france!

Superbe. Maybe i can add value in sound design or live tips we'll see.

Cheers and thanks again!

Zom

I ment the oberheim dpx-1

Uhhm....  you mean looking like a tank, built like a prototype ?!...

 ;)

and the former service engineer from france!

The only problem is that he is french... ;D (see attachment)

The attachment seems to quite accurate indeed  ;D

But there's one thing which is not exactly correct:
"(...) It is bounded by Germany, Spain, Switzerland and some smaller nations of no particular importance and with no decent shops. (...)"

I don't agree with the "smaller nations" part of this sentence (Belgium !)  ;)

hehe, and the netherlands hehe.

cheers zom

maybe someone knows a broken one somewhere? than I can use that one as a fancy masterkeyboard, and parts supplier. and playing my dpx and e5000.

cheers zom

http://eiiiforum.com/index.php?topic=318.0  <-- thread about replacing keys.  a kawai k1's keys can be used.

if you are gigging with the EII, leave a floppy disk in the drive when you carry it around.

this is what i was told by one of the guys i bought one of my eii's from.  He said whenever you are moving or carrying an eii around to always have a floppy disk in the drive(s)

Normally, when the machines came from factory, they had a cardboard diskette. Some idiots started the machine with it and mosyt of the time, it was blowing away the floppy reader.
I insulted the guys at the factory, telling them they should put some real diskettes instead.

Pffff....

I drove 336 km to northern Germany to pick up an EII. He is the first owner, bought it for apprix 21000deutch mark (10k dollars) back in early eighties (84) and the machine never left his studio at home. He was approx in his late 50's. We got the machine in the livingroom, and it was a really stunning new looking machine, all the original stuf came with it: manual, disks (and 1000 5,25 or so more) pedals etc. He told me it was a plus although it showed the old logo's. But he had it upgraded with extra memory back then, and an extra drive!
We took a box with discs and found his favorate string disc. switched the machine on, First disk, was not firing, second disc (also string sound), yes! it worked.

Headphone on the mix..... output and, the nicest sounding fat strings since 2007 ;)

He became enthousisatic as well and began carring leads of discs upstairs..

and i produced a smile from ear to ear....


...........................................Super story so far.................

but then suddenly whit smoke from left behind, and a smell. Quickly he pulled out the power cord. And we both were quit.........

We made a deal and i took it back to my home, after a 336km drive.

Shit!Z!@^%!*&@&^#  What now! Finally had it in my hands.

Probabley elco's and power supply.


So question:

what are the specs of the power supply?


help!!?!??!

What is "elco's" ?

electrolytic capacitor, i read about it on the net that they die inside old synths.

will a replacement of the power supply do?

 

Forget about it, just change the power supply.

Thx doc.

Where can i find the specs of the power supply? Or can i find one? I noticed i just missed an ebay sell of one.

cheers. Zom

There is the diagram of the power supply biut I would not rely on it !

If someone here could, occasionaly, measure the voltages and give the pinout, it would be great.
Believe it or not, I don't have it.

Thanks anyway doc!

Zom,

If you're not a DIY kind of guy, you could contact synth repairer Boemstjak in Castricum (Netherlands, not that far from you). I'm sure he'll be able to repair your EII (PSU) !
See http://www.synthdoctor.nl/ (I don't want to make advertisement for him, I just want to help you  :) )
 

Its very kind from you.

Thanks.

Ah i remember tha t you were on oure way to him that day you bought my eii. thx. I will. Thanks!

I am a diy only on easy things when they are sought out inc photo's. (polysix batt damage repair etc)

p.s. look at www.synthesizer.startkabel.nl for more repair stuff.

cheers zom.

With the experience I've got, I would not even touch this power supply, just swap it because, for example, if you forget to put back the wires from the input voltage selector, the power supply just explodes.

There is a way to find some switching power supplies at low cost, wich are protected as well in input and output, for the price of the capacitors.

Don't loose your time with this shit wich is a nightmare.

All we need is the wiring of the actual PSU (voltages) and then, we can find how to change it.

Regards

Hi I just got on this forum after reading around on it. I am a tech that is working on a bunch of emulator 2's
One comment is what are "Elco's they are connectors used in many electronics.
And so are electrolytic capacitors! they are not the same.
The Elco pins can become corroded and resistive so they may stop operating especially at the power supply connections.
A common problem is the solder points below this connector need to be re soldered. each disk drive has two voltages 12 and 5 to power the drives. check them first!
The capacitors on these units seem to hold up fine although some may need replacing. also the MT4264 memory chips are a common failure causing boot problems. 
I had about 12 of them bad on one unit. they are rare and hard to find now. used on many old apple computers as well as others. feel free to drop me an email for questions. I have memory test disk's and scanner test disks i may sell copies of. plus debug Eproms.

Also any of you in Los Angeles can go to Advanced musical electronics to have your EII's repaired.
http://www.advancedmusical.com/

As well, one can see that the connector FEMALE, the one having wires, may get overheated and brown. The best is to take away the contact with a wire (by pushing with a tiny screwdriver thru the window and put back the contact in place.

On the PCB, take away the old solder, resolder. You may even scratch away the varnish on the pcb track in order to allow a bigger surface for the solder.

Exactly! thanks DOC!

Its a pleasure !

There's a pic of a burned connector. As you can see, its more obvious on the yellow wires, wich distribute de +5V, and even the PSU standoffs and the air (cooling) vents are brown.

Hi,

Well this sounds very familliar.  As we tried to run a disk, the power supply blew.

Probably we will fix it next week, but a parts list would come in handy though. Does anyone has such a list? That will ease up the recovering of a psu.

So anyone who buys an emu II should check on the corroded disk connections I suppose.

thx you all.

Cheers Zom

(I can still smile, 'cause my polymoog is in a worse bad shape haha)

@ chaztech,  for the MT4264 , what Apple do you mean, the Apple II or mac?

@ chaztech : happy for you, you got the Memory test disks etc.. that you may SALE.

I don't think we are selling anything here, I could as well sell my advices. You should go on E-Bay for this. I don't me you have to send diskettes all around, its just that it can be possible to upload them somewhere.

======
Zomnius, change the power supply !

I am finishein an excell file allowing to plug some car lamps instead of of the E-Mu when you try to repair the PSU. This would avoid to blow everything.
This excell file alows to calculate the required power of the car lightbulbs (wich are on 12 V) according to the PSU output towards the current.

I have put the normalized voltage (12V) and powers, but it may differ in the States.

I will post this I think tonight. For free.

Cheers

thx Doc!

Zomnius:   I believe the apple II but im not sure there is a list of equivalents i will post hear
These are 64kX1 16pin dip IC's The speed of 15 or faster
Not sure if all these will work but i have tried several that have so far worked fine like 4164 4864


D4164C-2     NEC           2/$1
44    D4164C-15
7    HYB4164P2BD    Hitachi    
18    KM4164B-15    Samsung    
50    M3764A-15    OKI    
32    M5K4164AP-15    Mitsubishi    
32    MB8264-15    Fairchild    
225    MCM4164BP15    Motorola    
16    MCM6665BP20    Motorola    
53    MK4564N-20    Mostek    
4    MT4264-25    Micron    
11    TMS4164-15NL    TI    
10    TMS4164-20NL

Doc.. I would be glad to upload the Memory files! but so far i have no way of copying them except on the emu! I am not looking to get rich just cover cost of my time to make and ship to the users hear. what would be a reasonable cost in your mind! any other suggestions from other users please email me!