> From: steven
>
> just had the oddest thing happen while recording w/my
> polaris--- it was on for a couple hours, basically fine, but
> while playing and fooling with the mod levers suddenly the
> sound burst into a loud distorted buzz that wasnt operated
> by the keys. it continued when i stopped . i briefly
> paniced, noticed that the sequencer had two Leds on
> simultaneously [like stop and record] i sensed this was
> real wrong and instantly hit the power switch off . this
> might have taken 5 seconds.
> on restarting -- the loud sound was gone, but it was
> obvious that my sound memory was all messed up-- the sounds
> were different or missing/blank .
> It seemed the controls worked normally, so i did a reset
> and reloaded the memory off my backup cassette--
> now it plays mostly ok -- except for the memory--- some
> sounds didnt load correctly-- on most banks, the number 11
> position doesnt play or only very quietly on one of 6 voices,
> most others sound fine --a few scattered ones mostly on i
> think number 7 also seem weak. but oddly i have a split
> sound in a number 12 spot(k-12) that includes number I-11 as
> half of it and it sounds stronger than using the sound solo
> in its normal spot (I-ll).
> im still not sure all the sounds are 'normal' some sound a
> bit less full-- but my backup cassette has worked fine
> before and i just reloaded it again with the same
> inconsistant memory result.
> any ideas about what happened and if there is something damaged

The computer probably crashed, and scribbled in the RAM. When you say you
"did a reset", what do you mean? When the RAM is scribbled, it isn't just
your programs that get corrupted, it's all the calibrations too. If your
"reset" didn't include this, you need to do all the calibrations documented
in the service manual. That may make the instrument sound normal again.

Also, you should probably dump your programs to files over MIDI. The
cassette is a really lousy, unreliable interface. (Unfortunately, there
isn't a way to save the calibrations over MIDI.)

--

Ciao, Paul D. DeRocco
Paul mailto:pderocco@...