What to do when you get nothing but blocks on the LCD screen.

[Circuitbenders]

Heres a quick tip:

On a few occassions i've had problems with drum machines refusing to boot up properly. Usually in this situation the machine will power up fine but instead of booting up the operating system you'll just get about 6 black blocks on the LCD screen and thats as far as you'll get. You won't be able to get it to do anything else.

If this happens the first thing you want to look at is replacing the timing crystal you'll inevitably find on the board labelled with the prefix X or XTAL. It'll usually be a silver oblong can like the ones below.



If you have a problem with the clock crystal its usually easier to diagnose if you have an oscilloscope but crystals only cost about 20p each so you might as well give replacing it a go. I've rescued two Kawai R-50's, a Cheetah MD16R and a couple of Yamaha drum machines just by replacing the crystal.

[voodoolikeudoo]

If you're ever up in Manchester let me know and i'll buy you a beer! 
My kawai R50 started doing the block thing about 2 years back and i never knew what to do about it but i bought a new crystal yesterday on the advice of this post and voila!

..........a fully functional R50!