S-900, LCD and Disk Drive

[ed]

#1)  Someone on AH just recently posted this...if it's the foil that has
died, this place in germany sells replacements of different sizes -
http://www.midi-rakete.de/ .  If it's not the foil but a circuit problem, I
can't help you out, but a friend of mine has the service manual.  I can ask
him.
#2)  I used the info at http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~jules/Akai/ on replacing the
S900 drive to replace an S1000 drive.  It works fine.  I used a chinon
FZ-357 floppy, and jumpered it as instructed on that web site.  I assume
this should work fine for the S900 since that's what it was intended.
Chinon's should be fairly easy to find.

ed 

At 01:56 PM 10/01/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi I hope this is an appropriate question to the synth post.  I am trying
>to bring an AKAI s-900 sampler back to usefullness and am having two
>problems.  #1) the LCD display used to light up (now it doesn't), it will
>suck to have to work with the lights on, I love working in the dark!  Does
>anyone know where I should start when searching for the fix to this
>problem?  Anyone know anything about which pin might be responcible for the
>LCD's glowing attribute?
>        #2) the infamous disk drive of the s-900, I have read all over the
>web that only certain drives work with the s-900 and other posts say not
>ever to bother and just to drop 200USD on a new one from AKAI (yah right,
>this is DIY!  I am doing this on the cheap!).  Does anyone have any
>practicle experience with fixing and replacing the s-900's drive?  What
>jumpers should I set and what type of drives work the best?
>        Thanks a bunch!  dAve
>