"illegal ram!!!! low battery???"

    Hello,

    I recently purchased a Virus C it has started to sometimes show, on boot up, a message saying "illegal ram!!!! low battery???". All my saved sounds from banks A and B are gone. Also, on some sounds, there is a lot of harsh crackling and it has frozen with a screeching sound once. I have changed the internal battery. Any assistance in resolving this issue will be much-appreseated, thank you.


    Kind Regards

    Andrew Woods

    You already solved the illegal RAM issue by replacing the battery. If it still shows, the battery that you put in is discharged as well.


    The "on some sounds, there is a lot of harsh crackling and it has frozen with a screeching sound once" issue is separate. I suggest you check if the capacitor that will eventually wear out has already been replaced or not, see https://64.media.tumblr.com/c6…p8i3gqpKF71sy7a0i_500.jpg for a picture and https://joeyfehrenbach.tumblr.…he-synth-repair-adventure for the full story of that person's journey.


    If it's brown, it likely hasn't been replaced yet and may be at the edge of failing. Either way, in my personal experience, if the capacitor is replaced and the DSP still crashes (= screeching sound or no sound), the DSP needs replacement.


    The crackling appears to happen when the linear 5V regulator overheats. If you open a side panel and let a fan blow into it, the crackling should be gone if that's the cause. For a more permanent solution in this case, use a 9V external power supply instead of the original 12V one. It makes zero difference for the Virus but lets it run cooler.

    Thank you for the information.

    I was thinking to remove the battery and make sure the connections are not corroded, causing intermittent faults. I'll have a look at the capacitor when I'm in there, if it's the original brown one I might just replace it. I have heard that the chips for these are not made anymore so hopefully, it's not one of them.

    Would controlling it with the Virus editor librarian plug-in solve anything, at least if it drops its memory it will be easy to back up my sounds.