Roland Jp-8080 Buttons unresponsive (all lights on) - Bricked! SOLVED

[enorthby]

So, I always find great info out on forums and figured I'd give back. I recently had an issue that I believed was with my JP-8080 OS/Firmware. nothing was happening when any button were pushed. sounds couldn't be changed, nothing was responding. All lights were also lit up. that being said there was one backdoor that seemed accessible and that was if the "edit" button was the first and only button pushed after the power had been turned on. I couldn't even check the OS by pressing [LFO1]+[1]+[2] because it wouldn't complete the boot cycle and the LED mixer animation would freeze approximately 80% of they way into the cycle. It could and most likely have begun as a compounded issue involving a low/dying CR2032 internal battery. Extremely easy fix. Open the case swap it out. But there was more. I looked into Firmware updates and thought. Here we go just do it. The unit is a brick unless I try something. If ya don't shoot ya can't score! I tried initializing everything multiple times since I was lucky enough to get menu access through the edit button. So odd that that was the ONLY button and sub features to work, yet they using them didn't help at all.

So I loaded the 14 Midi file SYSEX patches found here (http://forum.vintagesynth.com/viewtopic ... 1&t=103899) into Cubase and prepared to do the Firmware update.

I powered up the unit while pressing the [portamento] and [write] buttons and was lucky enough to see the proper firmware load screen. So I guess there was a 2nd backdoor into the OS that appeared to work (my bad). I allowed it to erase my firmware as it requested and then I attempted the install process. It was unsuccessful and bricked the unit. The scene was dim, and the error message was that the memory was damaged. Well here is where I got lucky. I simply went into the edit screen by powering up and having the first button I push be the [edit] button. then I went to "Factory Reset >> All", which I had tried earlier prior to the Firmware bricking. But this time the reset WORKED!!!! It bloody worked. All sounds were restored, the OS was back at 100% functionality and I was once again the proud owner of one of the greatest trance Machines in Music history. Was I lucky? Perhaps. But perhaps there is a bug with the memory. Needless to say I did not upgrade the firmware.

*************** The story doesn't end here ******************
Everything was working great until I tried to check the Firmware version via the [POWER]+[LFO1]+[1]+[2] function. Guess what.... bricked again. But this time I simply turned off the unit then powered it on while pressing [POWER]+[portamento]+[rec] and then Boom it worked again. I didn't even select any options once it booted up. I simply restarted the unit once again and this time it works and continues to work.

Lessons learned:

• I personally will not check the OS version any more

• [POWER]+[portamento]+[rec] is a magical

• Maybe the [POWER]+[portamento] is the real magic ... but I'm not messing with it now that it's working again... h**l no!

Good luck with this creature its awesome but has it's glitches. And if ya can't figure out the midi...try the keyboard in port