Can sound cartridges go bad?

[Patchman]

I'm thinking it's the ESQ-1 flaking out. I plugged in a Voice 1 cartridge which recently worked fine. This time I noticed some of the sound titles were funky, and the title of the first sound on cart A was blank. Tried it and no sound. When I selected the second sound, the title erased except for the first letter. Each time I pushed the soft button that first letter changed. I got weirdly different sounds with each key I pressed. I tried reinserting the cart and basically got the same weirdness. This was a Voice 3 cart. Tried a different cart and this time,,the keyboard wouldn't switch over to the cart banks at all, only the internal sounds would display. I re-powered the keyboard up and everything behaved normally.

Can sound cartridges go bad with age? I think the Voice (transparent cases) cartridges are re-writable if that matters. I didn't think ram carts (or carts in general) could go bad since the data is burned into the chip. Other than the contact strips wearing off, I can't figure what could go wrong with them.

I'm new to this keyboard, but do crashes such as this happen, and it so, is it known issue with the ESQ-1? The battery is new. I'm hoping it was just a hiccup and not the power supply or motherboard.

Thanks,
Rich

[NCChao1268]

I'm thinking it's the ESQ-1 flaking out. I plugged in a Voice 1 cartridge which recently worked fine. This time I noticed some of the sound titles were funky, and the title of the first sound on cart A was blank. Tried it and no sound. When I selected the second sound, the title erased except for the first letter. Each time I pushed the soft button that first letter changed. I got weirdly different sounds with each key I pressed. I tried reinserting the cart and basically got the same weirdness. This was a Voice 3 cart. Tried a different cart and this time,,the keyboard wouldn't switch over to the cart banks at all, only the internal sounds would display. I re-powered the keyboard up and everything behaved normally.

Can sound cartridges go bad with age? I think the Voice (transparent cases) cartridges are re-writable if that matters. I didn't think ram carts (or carts in general) could go bad since the data is burned into the chip. Other than the contact strips wearing off, I can't figure what could go wrong with them.

I'm new to this keyboard, but do crashes such as this happen, and it so, is it known issue with the ESQ-1? The battery is new. I'm hoping it was just a hiccup and not the power supply or motherboard.

Thanks,
Rich

Interesting, I thought I had an issue with my Yamaha DX7 rom cartridge too, but my volume was off. If you have a ram cartridge with rewritable data, I believe it is possible that they could go bad because they use a battery to retain the writable patch data and maybe the battery has died. Old Nintendo cartridges are this way too, they hold save game data using batteries. You could probably take a look at contacts of the cartridge, make they're clean and not damaged or anything like that. You mentioned that the battery was recently replaced on your ESQ-1 so I don't think it could be that. Do you have RAM (rewritable) cartridges?

I'm not 100% percent sure if what I'm saying is correct, just my prior knowledge.
Hope this helps

-Nathan

[madtheory]

Don't know what I'm talking about lol.

[MrFatVSTs]

The carts are pretty old now and judging by how heavily the battery backed RAM on the carts were used they could definitely be going bad.

whether it's a battery or RAM chip dying a different issue.

Not a huge deal because if it is the ram chip after all, there is that guy selling newly manafactured ESQ1 ram carts, and i replaced my old one in use since the 80's with one of the new ones since new flash technology is vastly superior to old battery backed RAM in every way. i wish they had a shell, but that's not the worst thing ever.

[meatballfulton]

ESQ-1 writable carts do not require batteries. They use EEPROM chips (what we call "flash memory" these days).

Any memory chip can eventually fail, but not all will.

[Rasputin]

For what it's worth, I have seen ESQ-1 carts act bizarre and it was just a simple matter of doing the NES-style cartridge shuffle to get it to work properly. Dirty contacts, either in the cart or the cart port.

[Patchman]

I purchased one of the re-writable carts from the bay guy and inquired (with not having a case) of static discharge damage. He said he's never heard of anyone having a problem in that regard, but said he can't deny static discharge could damage a chip. Otherwise his carts are great IMHO.

Can the cases on carts be removed other than cutting them off? I read somewhere that Eye and I Voice carts are re-writable, but not sure if that is true. The Eye and I Voice Crystal carts have transparent cases. All I see is the chip, 2 resistors, 1 cap, 1 LED, and the PCB. Both of my Eye and I carts (1 & 3) have the same architecture. I'm thinking the Eye and I cart crashed the OS so I'm a little reluctant to try it again, although the OS did recover on re-boot. Upon closer inspection, the contacts look good. This is why I'm concerned about the problem being with the keyboard, unless this is a known, sporadic behavior issue with esq1's. I had to remove the keyboard to replace some damaged keys, so all the Molex connectors should be worked clean.

Ha ha, I forgot about those old video game carts. Once the battery died the game wouldn't save rendering the game useless.

[meatballfulton]

Many vendors offered rewritable carts back in the day, but all the ones with patches on them are ROM, read only.

For some reason, Ensoniq was the only mfr who used EEPROMs, everyone else used battery backed RAM (stupid idea). Even Ensoniq changed to RAM cards after the VFX. I think it was because they could get generic cards cheaper...the cards for my SQ-R were identical to those for my Kawai K5 and might have been used by other mfrs as well.

[blueknob]

Years ago I designed a RAM pack for the ESQ-1, as mentioned these and my SD-1 use EEPROMS (no batts).

One point to remember is these mem packs should only be inserted/removed when they are not accessing data, something I guess everyone will know anyway. Doing so can damage various chips so maybe do tests to check is the fault with the ram pack or the ESQ1. As mentioned also, once the ESQ1 displays crazy characters, reboot.

[Oudeis Eimi]

Yamaha's "RAM" card for the DX7 is also an EEPROM, not a battery-backed RAM.

[Ashe37]

You can convert one of the voice carts to a rewriteable card... or the old VFX demo carts, too. I had one converted.

[Baus]

In my case with the ESQ-1 it was just a matter of cleaning the contact strip on the cartridge and a bit of cleaning of the connector you plug it in.

Both the Cartridge and the Cartridge slot had not been used for years if at all for the slot.

The initial issue was exactly how you describe it.

I hope your issue will be solved soon.

Robin.

[shadowmask]

The MCD card series for the Yamaha SY/TG/RM etc have been know to fail due to a breakdown in the insulation between the PCB bottom side and the metal cover.

A while back I did an open-up of a couple of them:
https://sector101synth.wordpress.com/20 ... lty_mcd64/
https://sector101synth.wordpress.com/20 ... d-64-card/

Brian

[HideawayStudio]

Yamaha's "RAM" card for the DX7 is also an EEPROM, not a battery-backed RAM.

The memory cart for the Sequential Prophet VS is also EEPROM based and doesn't have a battery.