Alesis QS-6 won’t hold user mixes, get garbled display. New battery. Main board? Anyone got one?
Thanks, Mike
Hi Mike, I’ve just repaired one with the exact same problem. The issue with mine was damage around the dram chip. Which meant removing the offending dram and replacing it with a new one. This requires a hot air station and solder paste to attach the new one.
Replacement motherboards are getting very rare for the QS6 hence the work above.
Thanks for the info. That soldering is above my skill level. Where did you get the replacement chip?
Thanks, Mike
The replacement chip was off eBay which was
TC551001BFL-85L TOSHIBA SILICON GATE CMOS 131,072 WORD x 8 BIT STATIC RAM.
(They are about 4 GBP/5 USD)
I use eBay for one-off parts and for larger volumes, Farnell, Mouser, RS, etc. I did look at replacing the motherboard on this one, but as I say these are getting very rare now. If you find one make sure it is for QS6 not the 6.1 or 6.2.
When looking for faults be sure you can see the fault, for me 3 tracks were damaged. So removing the original chip was necessary to repair the pads underneath.
With the Alesis QS6, the reset does not reset the user bank so if there’s corruption with the data in the RAM, a reset won’t remove it. I tested the RAM by saving a PRESET into the USER bank - turning the unit off (tests battery also) and then powering back on a few minutes later. If the USER bank preset remains then the RAM is probably fine.
With the QS6 I’ve just finished I had to load via MIDI all the standard user bank presets back in.
If you need any further help drop me another message.
–Regards Darren
Thanks for the info Darren.
Mike