Hi all, my name’s Chris and I’m from Sydney. I’ve had my Slim Phatty (SP00613) for about a month now and am really enjoying exploring the analogue side. I’ve been a Moog fan since I first heard “Switched On Bach” around 1970. I’ve always wanted one ever since.
Well - to my problem:
I was recording an internally-clocked arpeggiated live instrument track (using Logic Express on a new Mac Mini) tonight when I went to change preset mid-stream and then tweak the LFO rate a little. Suddenly, I see for the first time (I’m a newbie to these remember) a message asking whether I wanted to update firmware, and then a slowly descending mono tone that sounded like the thing was dying. Eeek! What the? It ended up asking for firmware to be uploaded. This was not due to me doing any kind of crazy POR with the Master switch held. This was mid-stream. A power failure? THere was power present, and I hadn’t hit the master switch. Just weird.
After that it was a case of coming on here and trying to find a similar case, which I didn’t find. Maybe it’s because I didn’t know how to form my search argument. In any case, I saw Amos’ v3.1 post and followed the instructions to update my SP to v3.1/654 ( I think it was).
After uploading the new firmware it worked fine, but as soon as I pressed the arp knob it latched by itself. I couldn’t unlatch it - it kept playing notes just as though I’d hit the Enter key.
Then - weirdly, I noticed strange, almost Japanese Kanji, characters in the LCD display instead of the familiar English. I then decided to perform a master reboot. Did that and still the same probs. I then did a reset to factory.
Now all I get is “Slim Phatty Boot v1.0” flashing at me - and it goes no further. Shades of a Norwegian Blue parrot. I then tried to hold the Master switch while doing a POR and it came up with the usual “Update Firmware? Preset=yes”. I hot preset and then up came the “boot v1.0” flashing at me and no more.
This sounds a bit serious. I’ love my Moog but this doesn’t bid well for it.
Is there something I’m doing wrong? I wouldn’t think so - it’s pretty straightforward.
Help! I’m in Australia, so I guess that I take it back to the dealer? I’d appreciate any advice anyone could give me - hopefully from a Moog bloke.
Hi Chris - that’s very unusual indeed! All was relatively OK-ish until the point at which the bootloader would no longer load to the “please send firmware” point… as it stands now I think the unit will have to be reprogrammed with a debug adapter, which your distributor (Audio Chocolate) can do. I suggest you contact your seller about a swap, and barring that your unit can be serviced easily. Have the service centre get in touch with me (amos at moogmusic dot com) to be sure they load the latest versions of all firmware. The firmware you loaded was about ten beta revisions ago and probably had an arpeggiator bug, for which I apologise.
Thankfully, I have not heard of this set of circumstances happening to anyone else - let’s hope it remains unique!
Meanwhile I wish your SP a speedy recovery. Keep in touch and let me know how it’s going. I will help however I can.
Amos - thank you. I appreciate how you take the time to service your Moog customers - as articulated by many here on the forum and elsewhere on the net. You’re a credit to Moog.
I’ll give the local retailer a call today, but suspect that they’ll ask me to ship it to Audio Chocolate which is 500 miles away. C’est la vie. As long as they can fix it.
I’d suspect a hardware issue under normal circumstances, as it happened midstream - not at power-up. I’m wondering if a couple of loud amplified “cracks” and “pops” I heard out of the system just sitting there during the day is indicative. Maybe the power supply cooked the main logic. Not knowing the internal architecture, I’m not willing to surmise wrongly though.
One thing - I found that coming in as a newbie it was nigh-on impossible to find the latest firmware. Your most excellent new website’s (congratulations on this - it’s a great site) download section provides what I’d trust to be the latest publicly-available stable version: v3_03_617. I tried this first - and I had the arpeggiator lock problem with this one - which prompted me to go into the forum and trace backward from the last posts in the thread of yours to get the latest. Where does this version fit into the scheme of things? Is it relatively late? Might it be possible to have your download page offer two versions for Mac and PC - the latest “stable” and the latest "beta’?
Oh well - time to cal the retailer and see if they’ll upgrade it to a LP. LOL
Wow - it’s back, and working well. I have to thank Joe and Andrew from Audio Chocolate here in Australia for the fast turnaround and great service.
Joe low-level re-flashed it and away it goes again. It has the same level firmware as I received it with - which suits me fine for the moment. I’ll wait for the newest from Amos to exit beta and reach release before I upgrade again.
I’m from London and a happy SP user since march, until the same problem occurred to me like Omaroo.
I was sending MIDI time code from Logic to SP and at one stage the SP screen said " ERASING…"
I turned back off and on and “Slim Phatty Boot v1.1” is flashing at me, even I can hear that “down pitching” tone when turned on since then.
Does anybody know is there anyone in London could do the debugging for me or can i do it if I buy an adapter ?
Does it works with MAC or PC is required for the task ?
Hope someone could help me soon , missing my slim baby already… can you imagine my girlfriend ,she bought it for me as a birthday gift…
Hurry back little mate!
can you imagine my girlfriend ,she bought it for me as a birthday gift…