Synclavier II Owners in the UK??

Post by **HideawayStudio** » Sun May 31, 2015 9:28 pm

I'm currently resurrecting a Synclavier II (FM only model) in the lab but have run into some specific issues with drive media and software which I'm unable to address without specific help from another owner. I'd be happy to hear from tech savvy Synclavier II owners in the UK who might be able to help me reformat and reload a replacement Winchester drive on this system as well as being able to help me duplicate Rev.M boot disks for the Superfloppy drive.

Also interested to know more about what can be achieved with the Mac terminal software on an FM only model.

Post by **HideawayStudio** » Fri Jun 05, 2015 9:48 pm

The beast is now up and running again but there is still some way yet to make it 100%.

..just loved retrofitting the dainty 50 Amp 5 volt power supply to this thing!

Although Steve Hills at 500sound has been helpful in sourcing a replacement SCSI drive for me I have to say I'm somewhat surprised how difficult it is proving to find other Synclavier owners in the UK - an almost diametrically opposite experience to the Rhodes Chroma community that seem to be falling over backwards to help each other.

Are there really no sociable Synclavier II owners out there in the UK??

Bitexion · Post by **Bitexion** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 12:21 am

They're probably not on this forum, then. Most likely some old hack from an 80s hit record band has a couple in the basement studio

celebutante · Post by **celebutante** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 2:00 am

Greg Hawkes from The Cars is one of those "hacks from the 80s" (KIDDING!) who literally has a Synclav in his basement. Says he hasn't attempted to fire it up in years!

Post by **HideawayStudio** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 11:17 am

I'm starting to tear my hair out here...

Incredibly, to date, I had considerably less trouble finding GDS owners than the Synclavier which is just nuts considering the Synclavier outnumbers the GDS by many many hundreds of times!!

Are they all in the dumpster or something?? ...the instruments, not their owners

I refuse to believe there aren't at least some tech savvy (and sociable!) Synclavier owners out there.

I need to do some pretty fundamental stuff with this machine (like rescue a whole bunch of FM timbres off of an ancient hard drive) but am really struggling without the help of some seasoned owners.

Post by **madtheory** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 12:36 pm

Not much help, just to comment that I'm surprised too! I guess it's not something Steve needs to do often? I get the impression he sells refurbs to new owners far more often than restoring machines for existing owners.

I'm curious, is the HD readable with another computer? Maybe look for help from vintage computer folk?

Post by **HideawayStudio** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 12:51 pm

madtheory wrote:Not much help, just to comment that I'm surprised too! I guess it's not something Steve needs to do often? I get the impression he sells refurbs to new owners far more often than restoring machines for existing owners.

I'm curious, is the HD readable with another computer? Maybe look for help from vintage computer folk?

Yes.. this is the route I may well end up following (ie. mounting the two drives on a SCSI bus endowed Linux box and literally block copying the drive using DD) but I'll be pretty depressed if this is what I have to resort to as surely such a basic operation should be doable natively in the machine itself!??

coastalscrub · Post by **coastalscrub** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 10:20 pm

HideawayStudio,

Have you tried the Yahoo Groups or Facebook groups? There are 2 Yahoo Groups but they don't seem to be very active. There are 2 related Facebook groups - one general and one is for buy/sell/trade. I'm sure you can find fellow UK users through there.

Here are the links:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ned ... users/info
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/synclavier/info
https://www.facebook.com/groups/6352228261/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/264229003777968/

I know that the DK Synergy groups on Yahoo & Facebook would benefit greatly from your experience as well. Hal Alles is a regular contributor to the Yahoo group. As a Synergy II/Kaypro II owner without any software, I'm particularly interested in the HxC mod you did, how you got the proper software on the SD cards, etc.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/synergy-synth/info
https://www.facebook.com/groups/synergysynth/

Thanks!

StepLogik · Post by **StepLogik** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 12:59 pm

HideawayStudio wrote: ..just loved retrofitting the dainty 50 Amp 5 volt power supply to this thing!

50 amps???

That 7805 must have been the size of a deck of cards

Post by **Fatbenelton** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 8:51 pm

have you tried to see if any of the reputable synth techs in the UK can help/offer advice? James Walker at Synth Repair, Kent Spong (KSR restorations) or Andy Jury (aka Synth Prof) spring to mind....may not be their thing but worth an email/phonecall

Post by **HideawayStudio** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 10:37 pm

Fatbenelton wrote:have you tried to see if any of the reputable synth techs in the UK can help/offer advice? James Walker at Synth Repair, Kent Spong (KSR restorations) or Andy Jury (aka Synth Prof) spring to mind....may not be their thing but worth an email/phonecall

The last two days have been an intense whirlwind of contacting fellow techs across the globe. It seems very few bar a few specialists deal with these machines.

Post by **Fatbenelton** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 10:40 pm

Ah well...

Post by **HideawayStudio** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 11:09 pm

SUCCESS!!

After a pretty horrible morning tearing my hair out I received a short but extremely helpful email from Mitch Marcoulier at Synclavier.com.

The original drive was a very large, heavy and extremely noisy 80Mb 5.25" ESDI drive coupled to an Emulex ESDI to SCSI bridge in an external cabinet.

I scooped out the contents of the cabinet and replaced the large linear PSU with a small (and much lighter!) cooler running SMPSU and reduced the fan voltage from 12 to 5 volts to slow it right down (it sounded like a turboprop!). I then fitted a small 3.5" Quantum LPS series 84Mb drive in a 5.25 to 3.5" drive bay.

With the help of Mitch I was finally able to configure the system to see both the old drive and the new drive on the same SCSI controller channel and assign them to Winchester IDs W0 and W1. This permitted me to format the new drive and copy the entire contents of the old drive to the new drive including several hundred FM timbre patches.

On removing the old drive hey presto the system booted on the new drive and the net result is that the instrument is SO much more quiet now.

The next stage will be to ditch the hard drive all together and fit an SD to SCSI adaptor card in place of it.

But that is for another day!

Post by **HideawayStudio** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 11:58 pm

Fatbenelton wrote:Oh dear...I mean, how could I be such an idiot. Making such a naive suggestion - I'm so sorry.

Just trying to be helpful.....

Nope, perfectly good suggestion - just already exhausted those avenues but thankfully all now looking much more promising.

Need to rebush its P-R keybed next.. been a long time since I've seen bushings go that solid...

more like coal than rubber!

Synclavier II Owners in the UK??

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