Broken Simmons SDE... please help!

[Christian Oncken]

hi all.

not exactly DIY, but...

I bought a Simmons SDE expander about 2 year ago for $100 and was very
please with the sound and "quirkiness" of the unit.  I used it alot.

Then the thing started to freak out on me... lost all the patches, wouldn't
turn on correctly all the time.  I of course suspected a dead battery, so I
cut the old one out and replaced it with a new one of the same voltage.

But that didnt fix the problem.  I was able to use the machine sometimes,
but I would have to power-cycle it a bunch of times to get it to work
correctly, and if it was ever unplugged it would loose all the patches again
and I'd have to start all over.

Now it just wont work.  It comes on, but the display flashes randomly with
gibberish, lights flash, lots of noise on the outputs, and wont respond to
anything.  I just cant get it to work anymore.

I was hoping that someone here has dealt with this piece of gear before, or
knows something about simmons equipment.  If anyone anywhere knows, I
figured this would be the place to find them.

The only 2 other things I can think of that might be causing the problem are
1: screwed up EEPROM... which would suck.  Hope not.  OR 2: something wrong
with the power supply, bad regulator, whatever... Maybe somebody here knows
a little more about this sort of thing than me and would be willing to give
me a few pointers to try and get this thing fixed.  Anybody got schematics
or a manual?  Any ideas about where to find some more info on this unit?

Thanks in advance.

Christian Oncken.

ps... the SDE is a truly wierd piece... FM drum synth with knobs...
wonderfully wacky.