Did Casio damage samples with its own FZ1?

[Robber1956]

This is about how the fading backlight EL panel behind the FZ's display among other weird behaviour of the FZ1 sampler might have corrupted early FZ samples.

Recently I downloaded these files from:

http://www.warningwillrobinson.com.au/S ... /Casio/FZ/

Yes, our highly regarded moderator Graham Meredith

but I also downloaded them years ago from sites that have disappeared from the internet and others from which only empty urls remain or had their content changed:

http://www.geocities.com/sirmidi/fzsample.html
http://www.reocities.com/sirmidi/fzsample.html (NoteIt, one of my all time favourites)
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/casiofz1/info
(after a long quest I was looking here for the magic CASIO "FZ to FZ" cable for data transfer between two FZ samplers through the serial port but still in vain untill Graham came up with the right wiring scheme from the notorious Jeff McClintock, founder of the FZ dump format but better known as the father of all VST synths creating SynthEdit !

http://www.synthedit.com/


One day, many years ago I loaded them into Awave sample editor on my Windows 98se PC and seeing this for the first time:



(klick to enlarge)

I never understood why these strange garbled lines appeared behind the waveform names:



But now I'm convinced that this is caused by Casio's wrong desing for the FZ backlight.
I checked all the available factory disks but only a few of the the first files are corrupted:

Disk FL-1: Violin_Cello/Harpsichord/Marimba
Disk FL-2:Clarinet/Flute/Oboe/Trumpet Trombone
Disk FL-3: Electric Piano
Disk FL-4: Clavinet/Electric Bass/Electric Guitar
Disk FL-5: Acoustic Guitar/Slap Bass Wood Bass/vibraphone
Disk FL-6: Classical Guitar II/Percussion/Semi Acoustic Guitar/Tenor Alto Sax
Disk FL-A: Piano
And from the FZuser Group (Fzug): Fzug-04/06/07/08/11/13 and 15

Fortunately most of them can be retrieved in a "clean" state because they are also to be found ( sometimes renamed) in other collections. But when copied and being redistributed on the internet they behave like a virus and can pop up everywhere anytime. Al corrupted samples above can be loaded and played without pops and tics but when a FZ with a overdated el-panel (they last for about 3000 hours before they cause trouble) is used for an longer period from hours to perhaps days the damage can be severe. I experienced myself what can happen.

[Ashe37]

are you sure those aren't just non-english characters?

[Robber1956]

are you sure those aren't just non-english characters?

No I'm not sure, if so can anybody translate or decipher? Not all files contain these lines. The corrupted files however do exist.

[gmeredith]

Yes, our highly regarded moderator Graham Meredith

Aww...gosh

Are you saying that the downloads you got from my site had these corruptions?? Thanks for the list of the particular files that are corrupted. That's annoying if they are! Have you played them and can actually hear a glitch in the sample?

When my FZ-1 started glitching it corrupted a few of my own samples before I woke up as to what was happening. Luckily I never loaded the factory disks in that time, it was only samples I had recorded myself that were affected.

Sadly, my FZ has now died, so I can't go and test these library files myself anymore

[Robber1956]

Are you saying that the downloads you got from my site had these corruptions?? Thanks for the list of the particular files that are corrupted. That's annoying if they are! Have you played them and can actually hear a glitch in the sample?

Please don't get upset, I already said they could be played without glitches, otherwise you, me and many others would have noticed this. I downloaded also from other sites as well and even found them on my "original" disks that are copies I got when I bought my FZ 30 years ago. No internet way back then (hm, or ? ).
I downloaded " yours" because I wanted a set that I thought might be not infected, but unfortunately they were.
The FZ usergroups I got somewhhere else.

When my FZ-1 started glitching it corrupted a few of my own samples before I woke up as to what was happening. Luckily I never loaded the factory disks in that time, it was only samples I had recorded myself that were affected.

Sorry, I meant this more as a metaphor. It lookes like a virus but it obviously isn't. There is no contamination through disk exchange or from one file to another.
It happens when de display is becoming dim and is not replaced by a new one in time. That is the big problem which a lot of FZ users have run into and perhaps still do. After a day hard labour losing their precious work, samples made with great care and then all of a sudden appeared to be corrupted is very frustrating. How come? "Did I do something wrong?"
And there is another issue which is very tricky. When I saw that weird things started to happen I noticed they only occured when the FZ, with the backlight almost gone, was powered up for some time. Every time I powered the FZ up everything was like normal again but after a couple of hours they came back and also the intervals between powering up and the moment the symptons started to show up became shorter and shorter.

Sadly, my FZ has now died, so I can't go and test these library files myself anymore

I'm very sorry to hear about that, can you tell us what you think has happened? Can it not be fixed? Does it still power up? Do you still have the FZ and are there parts that are still working for instance the display? I almost gave up mine but after fixing the tabs, the keyboard, puttingin a HxC FD emulator now it's still working like charm except for the display that died a year ago. But I'm going to try to replace it with a used one from Ebay (again, did this before and don't know if this one is working but I took the gamble and bought it anyway) and also I'm going to put a modded IPhone backlight in. Never a el-panel again, never.

http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewt ... 6&start=90

Maybe we can resurrect yours from the grave.

[gmeredith]

I downloaded " yours" because I wanted a set that I thought might be not infected, but unfortunately they were

Yes. That's because I got my collection from those same sources

can you tell us what you think has happened?

I had it switched on while I was doing things in my studio on the computer. I turned around and I heard the floppy drive start to whirr, like it was scanning for a floppy (none was in there) then I started to smell a horrible electronic burning smell (you know the one I mean ) and rushed over to it. The screen had all gone blurry. I switched it off and back on again, same thing. I figured the floppy drive or drive controller had gone faulty. I disconnected the internal floppy cable and power, and switched it on. It came back to life! That's when I made a dumb mistake - I tried reconnecting the floppy again. It powered up but no screen writing or response from any buttons, just freezes in boot-up mode. Disconnected the floppy again but now won't respond at all. Damn, makes me sad just thinking about it.

I think I'd probably be better off getting another one, and keep this one for parts. It's got the 1MB RAM expansion board in it. Actually, I'd probably get an FZ10M rack if I were to replace it; it was my main controller keyboard for my other synths and racks - when it died I dragged out the Casio AZ-1 keytar to replace it, and it feels good to use - it actually has the same key bed and feels the same as the FZ to play, so I'll just use it from now on.

[Robber1956]

How was the backlight at the time?

[gmeredith]

I had already fixed the backlight issue years ago - I pulled it out and put in an LED backlight setup, never had glitch problems since. But this was obviously a board that went faulty - I was there when it went up in smoke.

[jxalex]

can you tell us what you think has happened?

I had it switched on while I was doing things in my studio on the computer. I turned around and I heard the floppy drive start to whirr, like it was scanning for a floppy (none was in there) then I started to smell a horrible electronic burning smell (you know the one I mean ) and rushed over to it. The screen had all gone blurry. I switched it off and back on again, same thing. I figured the floppy drive or drive controller had gone faulty. I disconnected the internal floppy cable and power, and switched it on. It came back to life!

What electrically happened? So far it seems like power lines latched up.
In sufficient ground contact for floppy drive?

[gmeredith]

I suspect power regulator or controller circuit must have blown on it. I had a quick look but it seemed to be coming from either the floppy drive itself or the main board near the floppy drive. I never really bothered to check it out much, I figured it would be beyond my expertise to fix, and there's no one around where I live who could fix it. Thought it would be easier just to buy another working one and use my old one for spares.

[jxalex]

in future usage, what can be done is this -- for each power rail output to add the
fuse, and after fuse a group of zener diodes. zener diode (5.6V zener for 5V power rail or something other between), and even better to set 3 of them. In case of overvoltage they shortcircuit the output this way it protects the mainboard from the blowout. Roland synthesizers have this strategy all the time. However this strategy is that it breaks down the power supply too if the mains fuse does not blow first.
So, it is ok to add secondary fuses between the power supply output but just before zener diode, so in the case of overvoltage the zener diodes does not burn down the PSU by protecting the main circuit.
Since zener diodes can make relatively high current compared to normal use then the fuse can be 2x higher than the normal power usage (e.g. 2A if the normal usage is 1A).