Share your knowledge on these two classic MPCs
By ultra auris Fri Aug 10, 2012 6:05 pm
I walked into my studio today and my 60 with 3.10 was locked up and says "searching floppy for start up files" but seems to lock after that. and never actually fully boot. My first guess is PSU related but IDK. Guess ive been lucky, this 60 has been partying for 10 years without much break...Any ideas? Im cool working inside a mpc. unplugging scsi or the floppy doesn't change anything. no obviously blown caps. tomorrow Ill take it in to the real studio where I have a meter. thanks
User avatar
By mr_debauch Fri Aug 10, 2012 6:42 pm
wait, so was that saying searching for files when you booted with a floppy disk in the drive or not (or both?) ??

may I suggest one thing... it may not have anything to do with the issue or who knows.. try it anyways... unplug the ribbon cables throughout the machine and re-plug them in. sometimes over time things wiggle loose due to vibration, expansion/contraction.. etc.. it happens. Maybe a connection is partially not happening or something. I had that garbled characters issue on my display a while back and after doing that... good as new!
By ultra auris Fri Aug 10, 2012 10:05 pm
yea I did that already but Im going to do it again slowly tomorrow. for me I dont usually boot with a disc in. but it does the same either way. maybe the os eproms are not happy? Can you boot a 60 from an OS disc?
User avatar
By mr_debauch Sat Aug 11, 2012 5:53 am
ultra auris wrote: Can you boot a 60 from an OS disc?


no, not that i'm aware of... there may be some sort of diagnostic disk though... mpc hunter would for sure know... maybe if he is lurking around the forums he could verify that.
By MPCHunter Sun Aug 12, 2012 6:19 pm
The MPC should boot from the onboard ROM chips. The issue you may have might be with the floppy disk controller circuit on the sync board where it is tricking the MPC into thinking a floppy disk in the drive.

If you are running OS3.10, the only floppy that you would boot from would be Roger Linn's MIDI File Converter utility disk. This isn't an OS disk, but a program.

Out of curiosity, can you download the MIDI File Converter utility and see if your MPC behaves any differently?