EIII Repairs?

[who]

Can anyone recommend a technician in the U.S. who specializes in Emulator repairs?  My EIII has a couple of control panel issues that are beyond my ability to repair.

[Tony]

curious if you ever got any suggestions?

[Deft]

I`m not in the US but can probably provide some advices if you will describe the problem - got some experience with E3 restoration

[who]

Hi Deft and Tony!  Thank you for your interest in my post!  Unfortunately, I have not gotten my EIII repaired.  As I recall, the sliders do not work fully and one of the front panel LEDS does not light.  I've successfully done a fair amount of work to the unit, but replacing the ribbon cable between the front panel and the rest of the unit was a bridge too far for me.  I imagine it won't be a huge repair job, but there is obviously something I don't understand about how the ribbon connects and/or my solder skills suck!

Any suggestions?

[Deft]

Hi there!

1 which LED is exactly not working?
2 as for sliders:
a) the easy way is to recalibrate EIII - in master section
b) second - check the power connector and cables and voltage on the top left connector of card cartridge
c) and the hard part if there is a faulty ICs on ADC board.
Btw, does the wheels work?

Good luck!

[who]

Hi,

Thanks again!  I've got an S1000 on the bench now, but as soon as it is working, I will respond with answers to your questions.

[who]

Finally got back to the EIII!  I did a continuity test on each pin of the 60 pin cable and found one pin failed.  I re-flowed the pin, tested for continuity and it passed.  I then put the unit back together and found I still have problems.  While the Preset Management button works, meaning the menu displays on screen, the LED does not light up.  More importantly, the sliders do not appear to work and I can't hear audio when I play the keyboard.  (I can browse the disks and load banks.)  I do see the various channels fire in the Disable Outputs display.

Any ideas as to what may be wrong?  Given I replaced the sliders, I'm guessing I have them wired incorrectly.  (If I recall correctly, some of the newer sliders have different pinouts.)

[who]

Deft - I still need to test the things you suggested.  Doing that now and will report back.

[who]

I didn't complete the recalibrate procedure, but I can see the wheels and the volume slider change the values.  I guess not all the sliders are busted!

I see no value change when operating the data slider.  I was surprised to see no calibration for the sample gain slider.  I will feed the EIII some signal and see if it samples...

[who]

I got the data slider working!  it was simply a cold solder joint that I missed.  My bad.   

Now I have two problems left:  The Preset Management LED is out and I get all dead or bad channels when I run the test below:

https://eiiiforum.com/index.php?topic=495.0

Frequency response test: Goto Master module Special, Press "0" Magic code 1358 Select 4 Hook up MonoMix out to Right sample in. Set sample input level to 0

After test it should say All Channels OK This tests all ind. outputs and shows dead or bad channels.

In case of failure, reseat the flatcables before panicking Wink

Before running this test, make sure all sliders are calibrated and saved! (Master, Special 3. Save all trims after each step.)

I read in another post that all channels dead can be due to a bad calibrartion, so I calibrated again, but the channels are all still bad or dead.

[who]

Most of the time when I run the Frequency test described in my last post I get all zeroes meaning dead channels.  Occasionally, I get all X's, or bad channels.  Maybe I need to reseat the output ribbon cables?

[who]

I ran the test again and am getting a mixture of X's and 0's?!?!

[who]

Now the data slider is changing vales like crazy.  Maybe the sliders need to be replaced?

(NOTE:  In retrospect, I think the data slider acting crazy was due to something in the card cage.  One I reseated/cleaned the cards, the slider stopped acting up.)

[who]

I just found a post suggesting a pinched ribbon cable between the front panel and the card cage can cause no output.  I'll try messing with that once I get the sliders worked out.

[who]

I now have audio output, but it is just what I would describe as a UFO taking off!