> From: c.puidokas@...
>
> I just finished doing a major overhaul of my Polaris. I:
> replaced the membranes, installed new batteries, and cleaned
> everything (inside and out).
>
> I'm now running into difficulty loading factory patches back
> onto my polaris. It seems strange, but every time I switch
> on the Polaris I get one of many different results: sometimes
> all of the leds on the panel light up and I get a low noise
> coming out of the jack. When this happens I am unable to
> press any of the buttons or get it to stop. Other times I
> get the same result without the noise. Other times it seems
> to turn on normally and allows me to go through the load
> process, but I can never get it to actually load any .wav
> patches or have my midi sysex librarian recognize it to send
> sysex. Please let me know if anyone has had any success with
> this and, if so - how I should proceed.

If the switches don't respond, the CPU isn't running or has crashed. The
most common reason is that the power supply is holding the CPU in the
reset state. There are two different versions of the power supply, the old
one with three trimmers and the new one with only two. If you have the old
version, it's usually just a mis-adjustment of R17, the trimmer closest to
the front. In this case, just turn it clockwise until the nearby LED
(CR10) turns on, and go maybe five degrees past that point. If you don't
have that older version, or that doesn't fix it, it will need more
diagnosis.

If you've completely nuked the memory by removing the batteries, you
should do the complete initialization process described in section 6-5 of
the service manual (which you can find on the rhodeschroma.com site). This
may fix your inability to load, once you've got it starting up reliably.
I'm not sure why a cassette load should fail, but I think a MIDI load
requires that the MIDI basic channel be set to 1. (In the Polaris, even a
Sysex has a channel number in it.) If you haven't gone through section
6-5, it could be set to any random number.

--

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