Ahlborn-Galanti 2100 won't boot

[cnr1949]

This morning my AG2100 will not boot up. When I turn it on the display reads AG2100, witF Please Wait. I tried the highly technical steps of turning it off and on several times, that didn't help, then unplugged the power supply at the wall outlet. Still nothing further than witF. Any suggestions?

Robert

[indianajo]

How old is your 2100? What to the power supply voltages read? October is the month of colder room temperatures and many electrolytic cap failures. (May is the other).
I had an electrolytic cap bulge and collapse the 5 V power supply on my PC mainboard at the age of about 6 years. Organ builders tend to use a little better grade of e-cap than PC makers, but if your organ contains a PC (many do these days) you are back to garbage grade 2-5 year life components. I replaced the individual caps on my PC rather than buy a new insta-trash board, but I had to drill the holes out after cap removal because the silver solder won't wick out.

[cnr1949]

My instrument is about 7 years old so still on warranty. Yes, it is computerized but I have no idea what cap bulge is - too technical for me to understand, but thanks for your reply.

[indianajo]

The breakaway top of the cap sticks out visibly, and later they leak slime. There is a Y or cross scored in the top of modern cap cans to limit the size of the explosion if they short out and boil. These electroltyic caps can be in the disk drive, too, not just the mainboard. Good about the warranty. Some dealer in Bloomington, IN is selling off a demonstrator Johannsen in the last year of warranty (9th year). I suspect that organ contains a PC (most do these days) and the cheap computer board or disk drive caps have caused one failure already. Pc's are usually scrapped at 4-5 years because the software is "obsolete".

[arie v]

Robert,

Try this highly technical test...........

Press and hold EXIT (by the screen) and turn the organ ON. Once you see that something is happening, release the EXIT.

Let us know how it goes.....

AV

[cnr1949]

Thanks Arie, I was hoping you'd be monitoring this as you have helped in the past. I tried your suggestion, got WCKS=OK, BATT=OK, then the display blinked until it reached the right side of the screen, then it hung up again on original display, Please Wait. Tried your suggestion again, it hung up again, so I thought "Why not press ENTER" and all is restored. So, thanks for your help. I can "organize" my life once again.

[cnr1949]

Now I have to reconfiture my organ as whatever occurred meant I lost all my tuning, etc. I must get smart and save it all to disc once I redo it.

[arie v]

Hi,

Try the same procedure as I mentioned yesterday. Sounds like you have a data corruption in RAM. Possibly there is some flaky bit in the firmware as well.

AV