Vintage Synth Repair

On 25 Nov 2010, at 10:57 AM, brofjw wrote:

> Hi. I've had this Kurzweil K2000R for about a year now and I'm  
> starting to think it's jinxed. It seemed to have a dead internal  
> battery, something I knew when I bought it. I found out later that  
> the battery holder had cracked (as many K2000R's have). While I had  
> the cover open, I also noticed that this unit actually had a hard  
> drive inside but someone had disconnected both the power and the  
> ribbon cable. Until then I had been using floppies and an SCSI cd- 
> drive. I plugged the hard rive in and was thrilled to find it  
> worked perfectly. (Why would someone unplug it if it worked fine?)  
> Anyway sent away to Hong Kong for a generic battery holder and  
> replaced the factory one with it. That also worked perfectly.  
> Here's where the trouble starts:
>
> After ascertaining that the hard drive worked, I also plugged back  
> in my SCSI CD-drive. For some reason the K2000 didn't pick it up. I  
> figured the internal hard drive must have replaced the SCSI drive.  
> So I uplugged the hard drive again and tried to boot the CD-drive.  
> No dice. At this point when I hit "disk", the K2000 only  
> acknowledges the flopy drive and there is no list of either the  
> hard drive or SCSI. What's more, it seems to get stuck on the  
> "disk" menu and refuses all commands thereafter. Does anyone have  
> any idea what is wrong with this thing? I can still play the  
> internal RAM sounds, no problem. But this is the tip of the iceberg  
> for this machines capabilities, in theory. Should shoot this thing  
> and put it out of its misery? Or should I sell it for a measly $100  
> and move on? Or is there some simple solution I am not seeing? Any  
> help is appreciated. Thanks! :-)

>
> Have you set different SCSI address for each of SCSI devices? Maybe  
> there's just device address conflict.
> 
> Daniel Forro
> 
> On 25 Nov 2010, at 10:57 AM, brofjw wrote:
> 
> > Hi. I've had this Kurzweil K2000R for about a year now and I'm  
> > starting to think it's jinxed. It seemed to have a dead internal  
> > battery, something I knew when I bought it. I found out later that  
> > the battery holder had cracked (as many K2000R's have). While I had  
> > the cover open, I also noticed that this unit actually had a hard  
> > drive inside but someone had disconnected both the power and the  
> > ribbon cable. Until then I had been using floppies and an SCSI cd- 
> > drive. I plugged the hard rive in and was thrilled to find it  
> > worked perfectly. (Why would someone unplug it if it worked fine?)  
> > Anyway sent away to Hong Kong for a generic battery holder and  
> > replaced the factory one with it. That also worked perfectly.  
> > Here's where the trouble starts:
> >
> > After ascertaining that the hard drive worked, I also plugged back  
> > in my SCSI CD-drive. For some reason the K2000 didn't pick it up. I  
> > figured the internal hard drive must have replaced the SCSI drive.  
> > So I uplugged the hard drive again and tried to boot the CD-drive.  
> > No dice. At this point when I hit "disk", the K2000 only  
> > acknowledges the flopy drive and there is no list of either the  
> > hard drive or SCSI. What's more, it seems to get stuck on the  
> > "disk" menu and refuses all commands thereafter. Does anyone have  
> > any idea what is wrong with this thing? I can still play the  
> > internal RAM sounds, no problem. But this is the tip of the iceberg  
> > for this machines capabilities, in theory. Should shoot this thing  
> > and put it out of its misery? Or should I sell it for a measly $100  
> > and move on? Or is there some simple solution I am not seeing? Any  
> > help is appreciated. Thanks! :-)
>

On 25 Nov 2010, at 3:02 PM, brofjw wrote:

> Well, no. I did not do that. But that doesn't explain why it  
> freezes up in the disk menu. Once youre in it you apparently can't  
> get out of it. I would assume that you would assign the SCSI and  
> disk preferences as you suggest, from this menu. Or is there  
> another route? I thank for your interest so far, Dan. Maybe this  
> reply helps clarify the problem. I definately get you on the idea  
> of an address conflict, which is why I unplugged the hard drive  
> again. But it still doesn't do anything. I won't even load floppies  
> anymore. This was all apparently a result of unplugging and  
> plugging that hard drive in again. So maybe the previous owner did  
> have a reason.
>
> --- In vintagesynthrepair@yahoogroups.com, Daniel Forró  
> <dan.for@...> wrote:
>>
>> Have you set different SCSI address for each of SCSI devices? Maybe
>> there's just device address conflict.
>>
>> Daniel Forro
>>
>> On 25 Nov 2010, at 10:57 AM, brofjw wrote:
>>
>>> Hi. I've had this Kurzweil K2000R for about a year now and I'm
>>> starting to think it's jinxed. It seemed to have a dead internal
>>> battery, something I knew when I bought it. I found out later that
>>> the battery holder had cracked (as many K2000R's have). While I had
>>> the cover open, I also noticed that this unit actually had a hard
>>> drive inside but someone had disconnected both the power and the
>>> ribbon cable. Until then I had been using floppies and an SCSI cd-
>>> drive. I plugged the hard rive in and was thrilled to find it
>>> worked perfectly. (Why would someone unplug it if it worked fine?)
>>> Anyway sent away to Hong Kong for a generic battery holder and
>>> replaced the factory one with it. That also worked perfectly.
>>> Here's where the trouble starts:
>>>
>>> After ascertaining that the hard drive worked, I also plugged back
>>> in my SCSI CD-drive. For some reason the K2000 didn't pick it up. I
>>> figured the internal hard drive must have replaced the SCSI drive.
>>> So I uplugged the hard drive again and tried to boot the CD-drive.
>>> No dice. At this point when I hit "disk", the K2000 only
>>> acknowledges the flopy drive and there is no list of either the
>>> hard drive or SCSI. What's more, it seems to get stuck on the
>>> "disk" menu and refuses all commands thereafter. Does anyone have
>>> any idea what is wrong with this thing? I can still play the
>>> internal RAM sounds, no problem. But this is the tip of the iceberg
>>> for this machines capabilities, in theory. Should shoot this thing
>>> and put it out of its misery? Or should I sell it for a measly $100
>>> and move on? Or is there some simple solution I am not seeing? Any
>>> help is appreciated. Thanks! :-)
>>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

>
> Hi Brofjw,
> 
> I'm not familiar with this machine, but I AM painfully familiar with the quirks of SCSI, from an IT point of view. SCSI Hard drives (HD) in your Kurzweil will actually be the same as the ones in computers, and the controllers will be the same as well.
> I used large SCSI RAID arrays on huge servers for years. Mostly, it all goes fine until either a power-off, or a replacement disk.
> It's usually down to clashing SCSI IDs. If you can set the SCSI IDs via hardware (usually DIP switches), DO IT. The software will usually defer to the hardware settings. (but not always)
> I've had machines lock-up due to some numpty slotting in a new HD without changing the ID. 
> It may be that your Ids were set by the software, and all was going well until you plugged-in that HD, with a clashing ID, which over-rode the software settings, and the software is now confused. You probably need to change the ID on the suspect HD (DIP switch?), and then somehow reset the software to read the IDs again.
> 
> Computers with SCSI tend to have a SCSI BIOS, stored in CMOS memory. It's possible that this has been corrupted, and needs refreshing ("flashing"). Go only knows how you's flash the SCSI BIOS on a Kurzweil..
> 
> SCSI - It's a minefield.
> 
> Best of luck! 
>  
> ** Try setting the IDS via the dipswitches before you mess with anything else! **
>

On 26 Nov 2010, at 12:18 AM, brofjw wrote:

> Hey everybody, thanks very much for all the replies. It gives me  
> some hope! So the concensus is that it's an SCSI ID problem. I must  
> say that the CD drive does have such a selector switch. It was on  
> "3" when I got it. I put it on 3 again (before even consulting with  
> you guys) which didn't seem to have an effect. I haven't looked at  
> the HD yet, but I will look for a similar switch there. I will also  
> see if it's possible to flash a Kurzweil! Thanks a bunch.
>
> Fred

On 26 Nov 2010, at 12:18 AM, brofjw wrote:

> Hey everybody, thanks very much for all the replies. It gives me  
> some hope! So the concensus is that it's an SCSI ID problem. I must  
> say that the CD drive does have such a selector switch. It was on  
> "3" when I got it. I put it on 3 again (before even consulting with  
> you guys) which didn't seem to have an effect. I haven't looked at  
> the HD yet, but I will look for a similar switch there. I will also  
> see if it's possible to flash a Kurzweil! Thanks a bunch.
>
> Fred

On 26 Nov 2010, at 12:18 AM, brofjw wrote:

> Hey everybody, thanks very much for all the replies. It gives me  
> some hope! So the concensus is that it's an SCSI ID problem. I must  
> say that the CD drive does have such a selector switch. It was on  
> "3" when I got it. I put it on 3 again (before even consulting with  
> you guys) which didn't seem to have an effect. I haven't looked at  
> the HD yet, but I will look for a similar switch there. I will also  
> see if it's possible to flash a Kurzweil! Thanks a bunch.
>
> Fred

On 26 Nov 2010, at 12:18 AM, brofjw wrote:

> Hey everybody, thanks very much for all the replies. It gives me  
> some hope! So the concensus is that it's an SCSI ID problem. I must  
> say that the CD drive does have such a selector switch. It was on  
> "3" when I got it. I put it on 3 again (before even consulting with  
> you guys) which didn't seem to have an effect. I haven't looked at  
> the HD yet, but I will look for a similar switch there. I will also  
> see if it's possible to flash a Kurzweil! Thanks a bunch.
>
> Fred