Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

Hi all... my XL is beginning to develop a habit that makes me worry a 
bit...

I'll be playing out, editing a pattern or a song, and as I push 
various buttons, my display begins to fritz out... It begins to 
slowly display random characters... they don't look like random parts 
of the LCD lighting up, but maybe some sort of foreign alphabet?!

At first, I can clear it up by pushing the PATTERN or SONG button... 
but eventually it takes over so that my LCD is just full of these 
characters and won't change at all.  I have to power it down 
completely.

But THEN... the next time I power it up, it freezes... all the LEDs 
light, the LCD lights up but displays nothing, and the unit is 
unresponsive.  Sometimes if I boot into test mode or credits mode, it 
will kick back in, but I find most of the time I have to disconnect 
it from the mains and let it sit for a while before it will boot 
again!  It doesn't seem to affect my user data.

I can't really pin down a single cause or pattern, but I know that it 
normally begins to happen if I'm pressing buttons rapidly, or if I 
work on the machine for a long period of time (maybe 3-4 hours)  Once 
the strange characters start to appear, there's nothing I can do... a 
crash is inevitable...

And to top it off... I think it's getting more frequent, and crashing 
faster with each occurrence! That could just be me getting gear-
paranoid though...

Any thoughts on this one, group?  I'm getting nervous about even 
turning my XL on... I'm afraid I'm doing some sort of damage!

Thanks

SC