Need help troubleshooting emax II rack - internal HD issue or power supply??

[mooncat]

Hi - i hadn't powered this machine up for maybe 5 years but it booted fine yesterday,  i made all the midi and audio connections - so far so good.  briefly shut it down to change it's order in my rack and when i restarted it the internal HD started to power up but after about 10 seconds, powered back down.  on the display i could see the message "checking floppy, checking scsi 1 ....... then going into a checking scsi 2,3,4,5,6,7 loop ad infinitum. the floppy light is on as is the red light to the right of the sequencer stop button. anyway, this is all i can get it to do.

any thoughts, advice, would be very much appreciated!!!  thank you!

[lubb]

Hi,

so the internal hard disk doesn't spin any more? or spins intermittently? (when you repeat booting)

[mooncat]

Hi yes it spins for about 10 seconds or so and then spins down and I get a MSG on the display that it's checking the scsi bus.

[lubb]

try booting the Emax II from floppy disk based software. if the unit boots from the floppy, try copying the software to the internal hard disk. if it doesn't help, reformat the hard disk.

[mooncat]

it's been so long since i bought that unit - wondering if i even have any emax floppies - i believe everything came installed on the hard drive, but i could be wrong.  would i need an emax system disk to do what you suggested? thanks for your help!

[lubb]

yes, you need s system floppy disk to do so.

I will try to search where the OS for Emax II could downloaded (I haven't got an EmxII) , and let you know...

[mooncat]

great! i tried this link but it's long gone:
http://www.emulatorarchive.com/Archives/Samplers/EmaxOverview/EmaxOS/emaxos.html

[mooncat]

i managed to find all of my originla  emax II floppies.  apparently a copy of the OS is on the spectrum synthesis disk so it booted from that and i was able to load in samples from my floppies.  however, with that internal HD not spinning, the system doesn't even know it's there.  i might try and connect an external scsi drive and see if it recognizes it and if so, then at least i know perhaps it's not a logic board issue or something.  anyway, let me know if you have any other thoughts. thanks!

[lubb]

The Emax II can only supply a limited amount of power to the hard drive. Perhaps you might try also to remove the internal HD and put it into an external box with a power supply, connect only the power cable to the disk and check if it spins up normally...

Yes, to try an external drive is also possible. I think it will work. The trouble lies, I fancy, in the internal drive not spinning up properly...

The best thing would be to try another internal drive, if you have got any suitable... (the list of suitable HDs for Emax II is found on the EmulatorArchives)

[FmK@77]

It sounds like your harddrive is at its end. You can use a power supply of a modern pc (4 pins 5v and 12v connector) to hear your heartdrive spinning again. When I used to work with older 2/10/20/40mb drives mostly the voltage ics on the harddrives mainboard where not working properly anymore. So they couldn't boot. I have used a slightly raised voltage adaptor or made a bypass to bring them alive again...but don't do this at home but leave this to a pro!

Frank

[mooncat]

Hi frank! I did notice that the power connector to the emax drive has 3 instead of 4 wires. I have an old seagate drive that has the same scsi pin config but came out of an old Mac with a 4 pin power connector. Could this drive possibly work? Thank you.

[FmK@77]

It sounds like you have a replacement HD. If it has a scsi1 (50pins) connection and not bigger than 500MB (more will not be recognized by EmaxII) than it will do the trick. You need to reformat the HD though if you want to use it in the Emax and you will loose all the info of your old MAC drive.

But before you do: removal of power connector (110/220volts) EmaxII (prevent electronical shortcircuit) and than use the 4 pins connector of the Emax in the replacement scsi drive and than replace power connector (110/220volts) to power up. The HD will boot up if it's correct. [edit] You don't need to connect the 50 pins to hear the HD boot up. DON'T connect the 50 pins while HD is in operation!!! Fully shut down Emax II and power connector and wait for a few minutes for the high voltage to pass out otherwise you will cause damage to the mainboard...

Frank

[mooncat]

Hi frank- followed your advice exactly. New drive spins up- all good. Now, I inserted a floppy with the operating system and want to format the new drive. When I go to format disk, I just get the option to format the floppy. Also when I hit the drive select button it displays the floppy (0) but I get a mag that scsi 1 can't be found. Does the drive need termination? Or perhaps you could walk me through the HD formatting process. Thanks again!

[FmK@77]

The replacement HD does have its 50 pins connected?. Otherwise the EmaxII will not find it.

[edit] make sure that pin1 mainboard is connected to pin1 of HD.

Frank

[mooncat]

Hi frank- everything's connected properly but the emax still doesn't see scsi 1. Could be the drive is bad or I'm wondering - on the other end of the drive is a block of empty pin connectors (2 rows of 6 pins each). Maybe something needs to be jumpered? Is this a termination or scsi ID block?
Thanks.