(Fwd) a strange problem, or maybe not so strange
2003-10-20 by John Silveria
I received this email through my website and thought i should forward it on to the list. I'm sure one of you could help answer this better than I can. ------- Forwarded message follows -------
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From: <jenn@...>
Date sent: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 13:54:08 -0600
Subject: a strange problem, or maybe not so strange
To: emaxjs@...
Dear Mr. Silveria:
First, let me say THANK YOU SO MUCH for your site. I am sure
you are helping lots of us dinosaurs with our gear.
I have an EMAX HD SE synth and it is having some problems.
I'm about ready to send this thing to a repair shop, though,
and I am wondering if you have some time and the inclination,
you might share whether you have experienced the same problem.
(also if you know of any repair shops in the Western US, the
info would be greatly appreciated!)
My synth was built in 1988. I have my entire HD backed up on
floppy disk, but I don't have a factory disk. I am assuming
that this is because the OS is on every floppy; also assuming
this because I have everything ever connected to this thing
including the sales receipt. The synth was in storage for
some time in a flight case in a dry environment. When I went
to power it up, it would not boot from its hard drive. It
would only boot from floppy. So I bought a new hard drive
from the folks in California that you have listed on your
website. I installed the drive and all was happy for about 45
minutes. I saved about 7 banks to the hard drive. Then when
I tried to do a save parameters (preset management option 2)
on my marimbas floppy, ALL of the hard drive empty banks
showed as DISK ERROR. After many attempts at restoring the
hard drive through the Master module (by the way, mine will
never get to the point where it will ask for the password), I
turned it off out of sheer frustration. Get this - the next
day, I booted up from a floppy again and it worked just fine
for about an hour. Then the same problem. So I tried to do
some loading from different disks. I have an EMAX disk that
is factory issued (it's one of the violin sample disks). I
loaded THAT in the floppy, booted the synth, and then tried a
Load Bank for the hard drive. With this disk, I get a
"different software version" error. I cannot seem to locate a
certain disk that is causing the problem. Last week I booted
with a multisynth floppy. It worked great all night. I
booted from the same disk a day later. Then when I tried to
load bank, it crashed and would not come back. This time the
DRIVE ERROR wouldn't let me scroll through the bank numbers at
all - it locks completely.
Now, I'm sure you've heard it all before. I am suspecting
that since the hard drive does work but only marginally, there
may be some other problem that is affecting perfomance. My
question to you is this: have you had problems with other
parts of the EMAX that affected the hard drive?
I know you must be very busy, but I would greatly appreciate
any feedback you may have.
Best regards,
Jennifer
PS I saw a question on your site that has probably been
answered already but I thought I'd share the link - I found
instructions on upgrading to an external scsi drive at
http://www.emulatorarchive.com/Samplers/EmaxOverview/EmaxSCSI/emaxscsi
.html, just look on the right hand side of the page for the info.
------- End of forwarded message -------
**************************John Silveria II****************************
AIM & Yahoo! Messenger: EmaxJS
MSN: emaxjs@...
The Silveria Family Website & Emax and Emax II User's Group
------------------ http://www.silveriafamily.com ----------------------
John Silveria II
AIM: EmaxJS
The Silveria Family Website
Emax and Emax II User's Group
http://www.silveriafamily.com