Lately my Roland S-330 sometimes hasn’t started when I’ve pushed the power button on the front. I’ve noticed that if I moved the power cable downwards it powered on, although a bit glitchy if I didn’t pull it hard enough. So when I had the S-330 out of rack I opened it up to see if everything looked alright near the power supply. And everything did, the soldering looked perfect. Moving the power cable made it turn on and off. I reckoned there must be some kind of breakage in the power cable, probably where the cable goes of the case.
I’ve unscrewed the metal plate in which a plastic part is mounted through which the power cable goes.
As you can see the cable is run through a bit of plastic that is mounted on a separate metal plate. Removing the plastic was a major PITA, the trick is to rotate it a bit and using a pliers and push it from inside out. After the plastic bit is loose, it’s possible to open it with a flat screwdriver. As you can see in the photo below, the plastic piece has deformed the cable so it looks like a U.
The power cable has been U-shaped by the plastic piece, and it’s here the power cable is damaged.
I bought a new power cable with a Euro plug, the original cable is an old style ungrounded plug.
The old plug (bottom) was an old style ungrounded one, the new cable (upper) has a Euro plug. This is the reason why I bought a new cable and not just cut away the damaged part of the old one.
To start with, I cut away the bad part from the plastic piece.
The plastic piece is modified, it’s the part that’s cutaway that damages the cable.The evil part is loose.
The I tried to unsolder the old power cable. That was unsuccessful and the tubing on the brown hot cable was damaged, so I fixed it with some yellow heat shrink tubing. I then cut the old power cable and solder it to the new one. Before I soldered I did remember to run the new power cable through all the bits and pieces that the original cable went through.
I tried to desolder the hot cable (brown one) without success. I damaged the brown heat shrink tubing so I put on some new. The new cable was solder together with the old one.I mounted the new cable exactly as the old one.
I powered it up and it worked perfectly. By the way, putting the plastic piece back was an even harder task than to remove it, but with a lot of patience I succeeded. The S-330 is now back in the rack, but before I reassembled it I took some bonus photos of it’s inside. Notice all the custom Roland chips and the HxC SD Floppy Emulator as well as all the different outputs.
Repair photos
I’ve unscrewed the metal plate in which a plastic part is mounted through which the power cable goes.
The power cable has been U-shaped by the plastic piece, and it’s here the power cable is damaged.
The plastic piece before cutting.
The plastic piece is modified, it’s the part that’s cutaway that damages the cable.
The evil part is loose.
This is how it looks like modified, getting the cable though here should be no problem.
This is how the power cable is soldered to the AC board. The lever on the left goes to the power button on the front.
I tried to desolder the hot cable (brown one) without success. I damaged the brown heat shrink tubing so I put on some new. The new cable was solder together with the old one.
I mounted the new cable exactly as the old one.
The old plug (bottom) was an old style ungrounded one, the new cable (upper) has a Euro plug. This is the reason why I bought a new cable and not just cut away the damaged part of the old one.
Bonus photos
The Roland S-series rack samplers can be connected either to a normal tv with the composite out, or to a monitor. The composite is monochrome NTSC, the DIGITAL RGB is in fact analog and doesn’t use standard VGA signals. It said to be compatible with Commodore monitors from the same period.
Since the HxC has its power connector further away to the left than the original floppy drive, I had to unscrew this cable holder for the cable to reach. Its a tight fit, but it works if this is unscrewed.
The HxC SD Floppy Emulator. The jumper is set to the most left setting, right next to the floppy power cable.
The PSU manufactured by TDK. The photo is taken before I replaced the power cable
Overview of the inside. Front is the upper part of the photo. Up to left is the HxC SD Floppy Emulator. Below is the PSU. Right of the HxC is the CPU, some old Intel one from ’82.
To the right is the mix output (mono) as TR, individual outputs are RCA!
