Everthing is fixed
1. I spotted an advert which was pure coincidence. No photo, no text, "preferably via western union as (he) doesn't like PayPal". I must have been insane to go any further. However I asked for a photo and to my surprise he sent one that seemed to be rather convincing and not copied from google as usual. Persuading him to send the EIII&HD300 to me took months as he thought I should simply buy this pile of old metal in Europe as he preferred local pick up. Obviously he wasn't aware what the EIII is as he sold it for 200$. He told me that he found it in a shed in the garden from the previous owner who left it there.
To cut a long story short - some dubious Western Union Payments and a couple of months later I finally received it.
2. When I first started it I got nothing but black boxes. Firstly I readjusted the PSU from 4.2V to 5.05V which caused the EIII to display the booting sequence neither booting from HD nor from floppy. Then I put it away for a couple of month in order not to distract myself from more important things and to read things up about this sampler, before putting my hands on it.
3. A couple of days ago I started to deal with it again. I installed a blue 20x4 OLED, a pair of new HQ fans (rather disappointing result..) and new sliders. Unfortunately I destroyed some of the solder pads of the sliders because the PCB is really old and low quality which is particularly bad on multilayer boards. Tracing these PADs with proper cabling took many hours since some traces are really hard to see. Holding it up to very bright light is helpful to see those traces.
4. Nonetheless it still wouldn't boot. In fact I just had to create a dozen of boot floppies with omniflop. I really advise you of formatting more than just one. Eventually mine did boot only from 2-3 of 8.
My next aim was to install a proper slim floppy/cf combo. The slim floppy mod was just as easy as on the Emax reffering to those instructions:
http://djtbs1.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/jm215a-slim-floppy-adapter-modifications/The CF card reader however was a real pain in the A*s. I decided to use an external version IDE CF card reader as I have most libraries and I'd like to swap the cards. I used it in conjunction with the standart ACARD 7720U.
http://www.conrad.com/ce/en/product/974837/?insert=62&insertNoDeeplink&productname=IDE-zu-CompactFlash-Konverter-mit-Einbau-Rahmenhttp://a4000t.com/store/index.php?main_page=down_for_maintenance((By the way mechware is not dead:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=72483))
Stupidly, I totally forgot about your experiences according to which the ACARD wouldn't boot from a newer firmware versions. The one I got from mechware had 3.90. As for the IDE CF card reader you should remove the jumper from DMA, but leave the one on RST. Soldering a LED to the LED pins can be helpful.
I have 40 different compact flash cards of different sizes and speeds but only one (32MB) worked on an interleave setting of 9. I knew that I was doing something wrong.
Then I found out about the firmware thing. Luckily I had another ACARD with firmware version 3.75 and with this one I was able to format really EVERY card I put into it. Don't abort the verification process - it won't boot if you do so. Also keep in mind that it usually only boots after 3 booting sequences.
5. Overpainting all these scratches wasn't particularly easy but I think I looks more than reasonable now. The front panels was horribly bent and it wasn't easy to bend it back into position, but brute force, a radiator and a rubber mallet did the job for me...
6. THE SOUND: What can I say about the sound?! Let me say it in this way; I own an Emax Plus and an Emax IITurbo for many years now and I thought they were pretty good, but the EIII is so much better. Unfortunately there's only a small number of demos online, but the EIII has so much power on basically everything, far more than I expected. I cannot imagine a fatter sounding sampler apart from rare and ultra expensive NES and CMIs... the Prophet strings that are so magical, the Moog and ARP basses are almost too fat. Actually I'm no fan of the 80s sounds this is why I personally prefer the EIII over the EII though the EII is gorgeous too..
I always thought that my Emax is capable of providing a fat and punchy sound if I want to, but comparing both now the Emax clearly looses (it has different qualities).
Don't hesitate to buy one even for much more than 2000$€... This one is a killer!
ADDENDUM:
As I have a working rack, I had a look at my EIII keyboard as I'm now able to swap parts. Cosmetically 10/10, technically 3/10
Black display, wouldn't boot..
#1 Adjusted the PSU and installed a broken HD. The EIII needs something at the end of the SCSI chain or you'll get black bars.
#2 It wouldn't boot, just spinning through the SCSI chain. At this point I have to mention that I found out that my firmware chips (V1.00) were either corrupted OR incompatible to the boot OS 2.42. I found this out by putting the firmware 1.00 chips into my rack which didn't boot then.
#3 The keyboard still wouldn't boot, the FD was continiously spinning when it was at ID0. I found out that both, the WD1772 (fd controller) and the 74LS240 were broken. Obviously the latter one is a kind of "interrupter" chip. Now I was able to boot.
#4 It just showed 4 MB although I knew 8MB were installed and registered on the Memory board. What I did was pure trial and error. I interchanged chip per chip on the CPU board and it turned out to be IC27 (PAL16L8ACN). Using the one from the rack gave me full 8MBs.
The good thing is, I spotted the issue. The bad thing is, that I don't find any kind of information about this chip neither in the service manual nor on the web as it has never been mentioned together with "e-mu". The next thing I'll have to do is to understand what a PAL is and how this specific chip works. Hopefully I will be able repair that. (FIXED!)
I hope this thread is a little inspiration to everyone whose EIII is still not working. If you have a question don't hesitate to ask.
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