Memory

[dvdborn]

When I first got my EIII it had been in storage for a few years. When I sampled a sound and played it back it sounded all distorted. This was due to the fact that the memory SIMMs didn't make proper contact with the memory sockets.

I took out the top card out of the card cage which contains the SIMMs. Took out all 16 SIMMs and cleaned the contacts with contact cleaner. I did this as well for all the SIMM sockets. Afterwards everything sounded fine.

The EIII comes in 2 memory sizes: 4MB and 8MB. The early 4MB version uses 16 x 'standard' 30 pin 256KB SIMMs. These are the same SIMMs that were used in the Atari ST. Later EIII models had 4 x 1M simms in the first 4 slots.

Rob from the Emulator Archive once let me know that: "EIII upgrades from 4MB to 8MB have become impossible. You can't get the PAL chips that address the extra memory. You need 2 of them and they are long since obsolete and unfortunately no one has managed to recreate them. We have the binaries from the E-mu Systems vault, but they don't work..."

[brian_ronn]

Hi Dvdborn

5 years ago I made contact to a company in the US regarding the 4Mb upgrade option. The company, I, Rob from Emulatorarchive and another guy from the US tried several attempts to recreate the two IP adressing PAL IP376 & IP377 without success.

Once we succeded to make the EIII recognize the full 8Mb, but the EIII hung up when trying to load a full bank or sample through all 8 Mb, as I recall.

Emu-systems put some kind of copy protecting in the binary of the PALs unforturnately.

If someone is willing to lent his 8Mb IP PALs to this serious company, I'll try to dig out it's name for you. Please let me know.

Best regards

Brian
Denmark

 

[Elmbeatz]

Hi!

Take a look at this:


http://cgi.ebay.de/For-EMU-Emulator-EIII-E3-two-memory-update-PAL-chip_W0QQitemZ27
0214179880QQihZ017QQcategoryZ46981QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[dvdborn]

Hi Elmbeatz,

I was watching that auction for some days now. But now that it's public here I decided to buy them before someone else did.

I hope to have my EIII soon upgraded to 8MB.

David

[Elmbeatz]

In fact, the seller is the guy who sold his Emulator II to me  

He's got the biggest synth collection I've ever seen (as I picked the EII up). It's incredible, believe me. Amazing. I was really stoked ... He's got EVERYTHING (except a DX1 I guess). And he's an electronic's expert.

[catalist]

Hi,

I recently got an EIII which I suspect was sitting in storage for a while. 

I got it booted up, and sampled a sound in and got the same distorted sound texture you mentioned in this post.  I opened up the machine, pulled out all the memory chips, cleaned them all with contact cleaner and cleaned the simm slots as well.  Plugged them back in, powered on again but the problem persists!

I ran the Memory test , in the 'Special' menu, and everything came up OK.

Does anyone have any other ideas as to what might cause my samples to sound that way?  I wonder if there is another board or connection that needs to be re-seated.... I am fairly new to the inner workings of this machine, and also the insides of keyboards/samplers (though I have opened my MPC 2000 many times) in general so I don't necessarily know what every last cable does.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

thanks.

[catalist]

Also I should mention, I was not able to remove that top card out of the cage, I just kept the card in there and removed the SIMMS (since it was the top card they were easily accessible once I removed the gold plate which holds the cage together).

Without sounding too much like a newbie, can someone tell me the way to detach that plastic post which separates all the cards within the card cage?  It makes it impossible to remove them from their slots, and that might be something I need to do in the future.

thanks again....

[PX-7]

Are you talking the white plastic piece with 4 slots or grooves in it?
Just unscrew it with the philiips head screw.  Maybe I don't know what you're referring to.  My bad in advance.

[catalist]

Yes I am talking about that piece, but it is also attached somehow on the bottom of the peg, and when I try to pull it away it seems like I am going to snap something off so I have been wary of pushing it too hard.

[catalist]

Hi,

I recently got an EIII which I suspect was sitting in storage for a while. 

I got it booted up, and sampled a sound in and got the same distorted sound texture you mentioned in this post.  I opened up the machine, pulled out all the memory chips, cleaned them all with contact cleaner and cleaned the simm slots as well.  Plugged them back in, powered on again but the problem persists!

I ran the Memory test , in the 'Special' menu, and everything came up OK.

Does anyone have any other ideas as to what might cause my samples to sound that way?  I wonder if there is another board or connection that needs to be re-seated.... I am fairly new to the inner workings of this machine, and also the insides of keyboards/samplers (though I have opened my MPC 2000 many times) in general so I don't necessarily know what every last cable does.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

thanks.

Just following up to my original question, does anyone have any ideas for me?

I really appreciate it if you do!  If I need to bring it to get serviced I guess I will, but I wanted to avoid that route if possible, since from what I understand lugging this thing around is not advisable.

thanks!

[dr.c]

Please, sample just SILENCE, no message. Hear it. Is it SILENCE ?

It doesn't seem like, but this is a tricky test !

After then, don't sample any sound but use an original E-Mu sound.

Is it doing the same ?

[catalist]

Thanks for the tip, I tried that , set the threshold very low and then chose 'Force Sampling'.

Here is a link to an mp3 I made from the result: DivShare File - eIII.mp3

Still has that distortion I was talking about, it is interesting that even though I was sampling 'nothing' , it still has a tone.

I don't have any original E-Mu sounds, the internal hard drive was empty when I got the machine and I don't have any floppy disks with sounds either.  Maybe I should try to get a sound online and put it on a floppy (formatted with OmniFlop) to hear how it sounds? 

Let me know if you have any other ideas, thanks so much for your time!

[catalist]

Here is a sample I recorded from vinyl. Just so you know, the sample input on the E III was nowhere close to clipping, and this is the result I got...

DivShare File - eIIIdist.mp3

although the file isn't recorded very loud, don't turn your speakers up too much because it is a pretty nasty distortion sound.

[midipuppies]

Sounds like a bad channel(s) to me.

[Elmbeatz]

Maybe I should try to get a sound online and put it on a floppy (formatted with OmniFlop) to hear how it sounds? 

Yeah I'd try that.