Just to follow-up, I was able to repair Predator99's Dead SPEA S-2000.

I had to re-flow the Sequoia chip! The board is flawless but the solder joints on Sequoia looked..."questionable" under a microscope. After a brush of liquid flux and quick hot-air reflow, the solder joints now look as they should and board came back to life and works perfectly.

I'd like to note that this is my THIRD Ensoinq sound board with poor quality soldering on the fine-pitch chips. I've had two OPUS boards from eBay were the OPUS chips were literally falling off of the PCB!

Predator99's S-2000 was also suffering from some leaking capacitors. The 1uf 50v caps are all beginning to show signs. Fortunately I bought enough spares when repairing the first S-2000 to replace the worst of the bunch, but I'll re-cap the entire board next time I order parts from Digikey...

Predator99 wrote:

I will also donate my Spea V7 media fx drivers (currently on the way to FesterBlatz 😉) Its REV 0495-6.

FesterBlatz wrote:

Replacing SMT caps isn't very difficult, but does take a lot of care. I suggest you look on YouTube for "surface mount capacitor replacement" and you'll see better examples than I could ever explain in writing. The MOST important thing is you must use a decent temperature regulated soldering station! The plug-in pencil irons get way too hot and will lift the pads right off the board--so don't even try. I've seen more than one of those cheap irons glow red hot... Other supplies that you need to do a good job is: solder wick, liquid or gel flux, alcohol for flux cleanup, and some q-tip swabs. Watch a few YouTube examples first, then practice on some old worthless boards and you'll get the hang of it quickly.

Absolutely. For SMT, a good iron and good magnification are fundamentally important. With a Metcal iron and good binocular microscope, it's almost fun.

Sorry for reviving this old thread, but I recently found an old ensoniq Soundscape 2000 with bad capacitors. I can configure and initialize it, but there is no sound.
So I would like to try to replace the capacitors. I'm unsure about the type of capacitors I will need (as I want to replace all of them like FesterBlatz did) There are 10uf 16V capacitors, but also a second group - 1uf 50V?

Thanks in advance!
SL

Silent Loon wrote on 2020-04-20, 15:27:

Sorry for reviving this old thread, but I recently found an old ensoniq Soundscape 2000 with bad capacitors. I can configure and […]
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Sorry for reviving this old thread, but I recently found an old ensoniq Soundscape 2000 with bad capacitors. I can configure and initialize it, but there is no sound.
So I would like to try to replace the capacitors. I'm unsure about the type of capacitors I will need (as I want to replace all of them like FesterBlatz did) There are 10uf 16V capacitors, but also a second group - 1uf 50V?

Thanks in advance!
SL

Would you mind posting a picture of the caps in the second group?

Thanks for you reply.

Here it is...

My guess is 10uf / 16V and 1uf / 50V?

I would order these:

https://www.reichelt.de/smd-elko-1-f-50-v-105 … tct=pol_2&nbc=1

https://www.reichelt.de/smd-elko-10-f-16-v-10 … tct=pol_8&nbc=1

Silent Loon, Have you got them ?

After you accomplish that ordeal, could you tell me how your card is initialized?
Like, is there a single pop running SSINIT.BAT? Mine does. There is nothing to worry about, I know, but keep reading....
In Duke3D sound setup, I get four pops and then the "strike from bowling" sounds play just fine (left, right and center).
It looks like a conflict or something in the style as all my cards don´t take 5 seconds processing that particular test.
And so I tried to change DMA, IRQ and disabling SB emulation, but the pops remains the same. I'm on square 0, little ball.

Could you use some help?

• Feels like the card is carrying some heavy shit in its shoulders:
  * MegaMan X - slow SFX and artefacts (You're often describing them as cracks and pops) So annoying!
  * Quarantine - This time I hear the crack issue just in the motor effect

• A M919 and a Pentium machine were used to discard conflicts or a finick motherboard, but that remains to be seen (both are from PC Chips).

• Downloaded DOS drivers around here - By Stiletto - No wonder the card failed. He is lurking me. Shadows of my previous visit here 😀
  *** Just kidding, you are the man. Thank you for this driver and forum protection.
  I'm too late, but thanks to FesterBlatz , the blue monster who can't even trust his own pants.
  Like, man, I replaced all the SMD capacitors on the Roland RAP-10 (output came back to life without a hiss) and installed back a missing one on a NEC DB60XG, thus the distortion when volume was maxed out dissapeared - what a relief).
  
  Now I feel I can drive a tank! (Bought most of the things you asked me to - iron station from AIDA, solder wick and even a device to test caps - capacitance and internal resistance - and identify other components. In regards of magnification, my Binocular is no good and old. My cheap USB microoscope (x1000) can't achieve celular level. In fact, I have to spend some time learning more about the device (optimal installation, software, etc...), but I've been fixing pretty good only with my eyes. *** By the way...

• A visual inspection on the Ensoniq card comes empty, except for a missing ceramic capacitor near the output (I hope missing caps have the power to do
  those anomalities on the SFX). For that matter, my approach would be find out some parameters by taking out the adjacents or better yet,
  the one to the left of the correspondent CI (I marked a PHOTO with a rectangle and also check the arrow out - It's prove some animal putted his hands and serviced this Coronado cross 😀 (not even that rare, but for me...) - The resistor on his feet is fine, though.

  

  The next step: proceed with the measure and finally repeat the procedure on a donor board until I find a match.
  This pattern makes any sense ? If you kwnow a better approach, tell me cause I hardly have skills to diagnose sound cards. I'm even afraid of osciloscopes (Frasco, you fool, you were afraid of the iron solder too, remember ??)

Alrighty, the solution might as well remove the SMD capacitors and check them out - after all what this thread is all about !?
Excuse me, I said I can drive a tank? ..pssssss....In fact I'm afraid of getting dirty. Is it really necessary to replace them?

Some time ago I failed miserably and ruined the pads of a LAN chip on an Asrock motherboard (blue eyes supporting Sempron. I loved it right away.)
Now my morale is so low (more like my mental energy).
That's what happens when you don't follow Vogons advices (I've been using a 35w pencil iron more prone to problems instead of the Metcal iron (??)/AIDA station). No despite, I forgot to add new solder during the whole process (the solder wick had no work to do at all ! God! I'm such an idiot).
Damn! Electronics never got the better of me. This time I was just freaking down $¨#$¨#$&# in the lab as my CF card was dying on me presenting weird characters. And this just happened after I made that big mistake soldering the LAN chip in that old and now crippled motherboard. C'mon, that task is as trivial as riding a bike.
To worse things, the CF card is basis for me to test old cards in DOS (as if the Ensoniq wasn't giving me enough headaches on that very moment).

So 3 issues in a row! Almost felt under my knees thinking how I could get in a situation like this ? Two pads shorted with solder! And believe me, it couldn't be undone. Even the painting/finish protecting the PCB was gone by then). At some point, I looked again to the united pads and asked myself in great anger: It was me doing this mess ? And I said :- Yes. I FUBARED the LAN sector. I did it!

I know these are different type of services, but do you know what are three subsequents incidents?
My capacity of troubleshooting is near 0%. I think I need a pit stop, but not now cause I am covered by the "protection buyer program", so I have a limited time to decide if I go for it or stay with this kinda battered Ensoniq card.

It came along with a Awe32 Goldfinch upgrade for around 70$ (on both). Pretty penny as I got a LAPC-I for 80$ 5 years ago.

PS: MySoul was separated from my body by these three incidents! With my temper, the card could get killed. So sorry for the rant and bad jokes - I feel better now. 😮

Hi all,

I just reanimated my sc600 reveal sound fm 32 rev C interestingly i totally go mad with the drivers.
The sc600 drivers from Vogons won’t work. They show 534 address is wrong which isn’t. No sound at all

Further drivers from soundscape s2000 1.30.03 do work. But I’m missing all the batch files I remember from the past: fm mode. MT32 mode etc. with the ssinit Version here I see no option to change that patching.

Sc600 driver ssinit would allow options gm fm and MT32. But says wrong EA
Sc2000 ssinit only allows /I but has a MT32.exe I think.

At the end it’s working but not with the original sc600 driver not with re patching options. Sad 🙁

Any ideas ?

Ps. Also interesting that all driver install programs do need win31