Korg Poly800/EX800 Users

Hey... I'm a new guy.  For starters, I have to give full props to you
lot for the *outstanding* work you're doing in the revitalization of
the Poly 800.  Really, it's a damned amazing community ya have here.

Anyway... I fished a reverse key mk1 out of a dumpster last night; 
took it home, stripped it down, cleaned the remains of what appeared
to be a burrito off of the keys, keybed and main board, vacuumed out
the case and blew the boards off with compressed air. Metered the
onboard battery at 3.23 volts, then put it back together, slotted 6 C
Cells and fired it up.  Up comes 11-p, and it outputs *some* kinda
sound... sinish, with swept noise... could be a glitch, coulda been
intentionally programmed.  20 seconds later the second digit of the
display goes blank, the first digit dims to 50%, and the controls lock
up.  

Tried the fire up procedure a few more times, learning that there's
nothing audible from any of the other patches, but the lock-up occurs
every time 18-20 seconds after power on.

Damn.

Any suggestions?

Kaden

You could try reloading all patches to factory settings.  Mine did
stuff like that, so I returned it to the factory settings and it works
fine now.  It could be a power supply problem too.  Try plugging it
into the wall, that might work too.  
Good Luck
Nate

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Kaden wrote:

> Tried the fire up procedure a few more times, learning that there's 
> nothing audible from any of the other patches, but the lock-up occurs 
> every time 18-20 seconds after power on.
====================

are the batteries fresh?

have you tried a wall-wart?


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That would be my next step if I could keep it from locking up long
enough to initiate the data transfer.  There's not much you can do in
20 seconds.  

I've tried a proper AC adapter, with the same results, and both the 5
and 9 volt rails are nominal to profile, which leads me to believe
it's something annoyingly unexpected that's causing the grief.

Damned burritoes...

--- In korgpolyex@yahoogroups.com, "n8tendo" <celticdude357@...> wrote:

>
> You could try reloading all patches to factory settings.  Mine did
> stuff like that, so I returned it to the factory settings and it works
> fine now.  It could be a power supply problem too.  Try plugging it
> into the wall, that might work too.  
> Good Luck
> Nate
>

Kaden wrote:
> Hey... I'm a new guy.  For starters, I have to give full props to you
> lot for the *outstanding* work you're doing in the revitalization of
> the Poly 800.  Really, it's a damned amazing community ya have here.
> 
> Anyway... I fished a reverse key mk1 out of a dumpster last night; 
> took it home, stripped it down, cleaned the remains of what appeared
> to be a burrito off of the keys, keybed and main board, vacuumed out
> the case and blew the boards off with compressed air. Metered the
> onboard battery at 3.23 volts, then put it back together, slotted 6 C
> Cells and fired it up.  Up comes 11-p, and it outputs *some* kinda
> sound... sinish, with swept noise... could be a glitch, coulda been
> intentionally programmed.  20 seconds later the second digit of the
> display goes blank, the first digit dims to 50%, and the controls lock
> up.  

My Poly 800 always makes noises that sound a bit like that - tone, noise 
and deep VCF modulation - when the memory is corrupted.

It's possible that your batteries are a bit flat.  The Poly 800 is a 
heavy old beast and will kill ordinary batteries very quickly - get a 
set of Duracells or other heavy-duty alkalines.  It's worth remembering 
that if you use NiCads, the terminal voltage is 1.2 instead of 1.5, so 
if were to use them you'd only get 7.2V on the battery!  This will 
definitely give you problems.

It might be worth removing the battery and shorting across the power 
pins of the memory chip for a few seconds to wipe out anything that's in 
there.  I don't *think* it maintains much state while the power is off - 
it is a pretty simple-minded beast.  However, I know that on more 
complex synths like my Ensoniq ESQ-1, borked memory contents can cause 
all sorts of weird problems.

> Tried the fire up procedure a few more times, learning that there's
> nothing audible from any of the other patches, but the lock-up occurs
> every time 18-20 seconds after power on.

The fact that it works at all suggests that there can't be much wrong 
with it.  I'd recommend finding a mains PSU to run it from - mine 
guzzles batteries.  A good power supply will go a long way to helping 
you here.

Gordon