Weird MPC 3000 behaviour

Hello,

As some of you may know, I bought an MPC 3000 from the US about 2 weeks ago. I´m working long time, so I had not that much time to play around with it... But what I can say until now, is that I really like it.
But there are some issues. Maybe someone here knows them and can help me a little bit to understand.

1) The MPC sometimes doesn´t recognise the 32mb ram... And sometimes it just recognise just 16mb. I noticed, that when my Iomega zip drive is hooked up at the start, the problem doesn´t occure so often... Has anybody made the same experience with their mpc?

2)The more annoying problem... I think and "hope" it´s "just" a grounding problem or a problem with my step down converter.
After some time (sometimes after a few seconds, but most of the time after about 20 min or something), the mpc produces a weird noise. and it affects all my samples. It's distortion sound. I allready deactivated my backlight via the contrast level knob, but that isnt the source. I´m no electric expert or something, but for me, it sounds like an electrical issue. I allready moved the mpc to another place, to check if it was an interference with another device, but with no luck. I can make a video if its not clear what I mean. I will buy another converter, to see if maybe the converter is faulty, but I doubt this is the problem...

The os is 3.11. I got the Eproms.

Would be very thankful if someone could help me

Greetings
Elias

PS: Sorry for my bad english, I'm from belgium

Elias wrote:1) The MPC sometimes doesn´t recognise the 32mb ram... And sometimes it just recognise just 16mb. I noticed, that when my Iomega zip drive is hooked up at the start, the problem doesn´t occure so often... Has anybody made the same experience with their mpc?

This is not normal.

Is either the EXM3002 or EXM3008 Akai or Mutec Memory Board installed in your machine? This expansion board would be located to the right of the CPU board. If you have 32MB of RAM installed, this board must be removed.

As the unit has traveled very far to reach you, I would recommend reseating every cable inside the machine as something may have loosened up during the trip.

Based on your troubles, it is possible that you may have an issue with 5VDC inside the machine. This could be attributed to a large number of issues -- bad 5V regulator, leaky caps in power line, bad memory, damaged component, etc. You would have to check the 5V inside the machine with a multimeter to see if it's getting pulled too low.

It is possible that when you have your Zip Drive running, the MPC may be using some of the 5V from the SCSI termination to boost the voltage temporarily.

Hello,

Thanks for your reply.
Yeah, there is a board right of the CPU Board, but as soon as i remove it, the MPC doesn't recognise any ram at all...
But I yesterday opened the MPC again, and put a "wire" around the Ram Sticks, to bind them fast... And it worked. The MPC recognises the full 32mb Ram at every start up, even without the Zip Drive on. So I think there is a contact problem. Cause, when I don´t put this wire arround the Ram, it won't be recognised...

And I replaced a few missing screws. And bizarrely, the weird noise problem is gone mostly. I don´t know if it is still there sometimes, but realy quiet or if this is because of the "16 bit" sound.
I think I will still ship it to a expert, to check the whole unit, and maybe to replace a few thinks.

Thanks again

Greetings
Elias