Fairlight CMI IIx

This is a restoration of a Fairlight CMI IIx done for a Client. This CMI shows some very odd behavior. The screen just shows green stripes, Floppy drive B wont work, The system wont boot. Time to take a look if there is anything obviously wrong with this machine.

The system is powered on to see what actually happens. The screen is all green and stripy.

The pen works though, Even if the screen shows these stripes.

The keyboard says - Power on - got that right anyways.

Ok, time to open this baby up. Here a lot of different controller cards. A first inspection reveals bad caps all over the place. They have white stuff coming out at the ends of them, some seem to be ready to explode. Taking notes of what caps and how many I need as I go on, until I reach the CPU controller card ....

Whee, I found out what is causing some of the odd behavior of the Fairlight. Those blue and black caps actually fell to the ground just touching them slightly. Some IC´s have to be replaced along with diodes, resistors, caps, transistors and the battery.

Another view of the same disaster area. Bad place to put those MSM2114L-2RS memory chips. And bad positioning of the backup battery, would have been better place it on the bottom of the card.

Removed the battery and got rid of some of that acid, now it is not looking that bad. actually the only PCB line that had suffered any damage was the one closest to the board text. I think this line might be the ground line for this card.

Moving on to the Voice cards and two system cards. There was a lot of dust on these cards but it got vacuumed away. The card furthest out to the right must be the system memory card.

All voice cards taken out of the system and inspected for possible damage and bad caps. Notice the big 8 Inch drive. They are freaking big and heavy ! One of those drives cost about $ 900 USD these days.

One empty drive bay.

Removed the top to see what is under there, just three big system fans and probably some big caps in those red things.

Just another view of the same thing really, see that big blue thing ? Nice big caps, this will be expensive to exchange as there are plenty of those inside the machine.

One of the system cards. One of those Eproms had it´s window exposed as the adhesive tape had come loose. Let´s hope it didn´t get erased when the card got removed.

The first system card in the system.

A close up of one of the voice cards. All in all there is 8 of these in the system. Can you spot the SSM chip ?

After replacing much of the logic, transistors, caps, resistor nets and so on the Fairlight shows signs of feeling a little more healthy. There is probably much left to do as it wont show the Fairlight boot up page and does not read from the drives.

..... That is all for now .. This page will be updated as the restoration continues... I really hope to be able to get this machine back to life.