A few months back my MP201 just stopped working.
It turns on, the screen lights up and the LED rings around the buttons light up at random.
However nothing shows up on the screen?
I tried turning it on while holding down various buttons. It not being uncommon for this to be a method of accessing boot modes like hard reset/firmware update etc on other devices I own.
All this gained me was getting different LED ring colors.
Opened it up and tested from the well marked, convenient test points.
5v and 8v both read 5V and 8V pretty consistently.
The sensor test point reads 0.225 to 5V pretty consistently.
(probably needs calibration).
So it seems fine, just maybe needing a reset? Either that or the microcontroller is fried somehow, but everything else is good?
Moved twice since I posted this!
My new approach is to see if I can’t force a factory reset by re-loading the firmware. Sadly, Moog does not seem to have this on their site anymore.
Honestly even if I can’t fix it, I just cannot bear to throw it in the recycling. It’s just such an unusual form factor. I’ll probably gut it and turn it into a really fancy wah pedal.
well I’ve still got this broken MP201. I’ve since progressed in my electronics knowledge and tooling.
So I’ve been able to confirm that the voltages are the correct +5v, +8, -8 at their respective test points. The USB is not putting out any voltage or current on any pins. Nothing I probe with my scope is showing anything on the digital side. And like I said, the voltage to the digital side are all solid.
I’ve deduced the C80591F340 chip is the microprocessor. It’s basically an old Intel 8 bit processor with UARTs and some on on chip stuff like AD/DA and static and dynamic storage. Kind of like an Arduino. They are still made but about $25 per each. But the manfacturer, Silicon Labs has a how to guide for replacing these (like it’s a known thing they die). And I recently got a stereo microscope to get into SMT soldering. So I’m gonna give that a try.
Though that leaves me with one problem. Like I said it has on-chip static storage. Do I need to ‘flash’ that with some kind of bootloader or basic system before it will accept firmware load over USB?
There is a JTAG port on the board but I haven’t yet found a clear answer on the pinout for that.