Share your knowledge on these two classic MPCs
By diggy Tue Oct 13, 2015 5:47 pm
First big up to this community and all contributors, i am a mpc-60 mk1 user and found lots of info here.

but now i'm trying to fix my buddy's mpc 3000.

symptoms: randomly, after a few hours or minutes of normal operation the mpc freeze up, screen becomes all black pixels and most buttons led light up.


i've seen a few people mention this issues on here but didn't find a definitive answer.

Some peeps say it was faulty ribbon connection or chip badly seated, cold or cracked solder joint, power supply issue.

I am ok with electronics but lack experience with digital or mpcs, i mostly build preamps, power supplys etc.


So far, I checked and cleaned a few ribbons with de-oxit, checked they were well plugged. checked mis-seated ic's, inspected the power supply for cracked solder point but none, measured the power supply caps with an ESR meter and they all seem correct (without unsoldering tho).


If some of y'all had that issue and could give me more info that would be realy appreciated. What exactly was your problem? which ribbon? or if it was the power supply, what was wrong with it?

Thanks alot for the help.
By diggy Tue Oct 27, 2015 11:50 pm
Thanks guys!

Of course it isn't the fuses, first thing i checked and the unit works normaly most if the time.

Good to know it might be the molex connector. i have also heard bad ribbon, bad connectors, bad solder joints, bad regulator.

So far i have cleaned most ribbon cables with deoxit and tested the machine a lot. Wirked perfectly but yesterday the "zombie mode" reapeared while letting the machine on idle.

It rebooted before i had time to take measurements inside but i noticed the backlight wasn't wirking while in "zombie mode". Which tells me (acording to the schematic) that the problem is somewhere in the 5v power circuit.

The machine is very clean visualy and inside. All the caps tested good with an esr meter (in circuit) and all solder joints seems good. The machine works perfectly until the bug. (5v f--king up). So it is very hard to diagnose because ut us intermittent.

Anybody had a semi failing 5v regulator or rectifier or anything?

Any of your experiences helps. Thanks!