SP-303 regularly crashes, has almost no internal memory

[mwpher]

Hey folks.

I bought an SP-303 off a highly-rated seller on eBay, who said it had been tested. I should've noticed that this seller sold almost exclusively clothing.

While the effects are awesome, I experience a number of problems with it:

- Regular crashes when doing anything even tangentially related to the disk. It seems especially likely to crash if the internal volume is very loud (the little red light turning on). By tangentially related, I mean even doing something like preparing to record but not actually starting it.

- Guaranteed crash when writing to external memory card. It could be the card at fault but I don't have any reason to believe that.

- Internally, runs out of memory after about 4 seconds of recording, assuming it doesn't crash. Seems to get shorter every time.

- High noise level, that almost completely ruins the compression feature as the noise is loud enough to fade in and out like the freakin' ocean waves.

My dad and I opened it up. We weren't sure enough to operate on it, but we did notice a couple connections (mostly on the corners of a couple ribbon cables) that looked very unstable.

Have you seen any behavior like this? Have any ideas on how to fix it? I'd be happy to grab photos of the inside if you like, or sell it to someone who wants to take a shot at repairing it.

I'd love to restore it to 100% working order, and make a music workflow centered around it.

[ryba]

Do you use proper Adaptor? 9V 1A center negative.

[mwpher]

Do you use proper Adaptor? 9V 1A center negative.

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Inexplicably, the power plug that came with it was 6V 250mA. It's labeled: "Intended for CASIO electronic calculator". I should've figured it'd be the most basic stuff.

It handles the memory card perfectly, though it still has almost no memory internally. Is it possible to get new internal memory perhaps?

[ryba]

So the most of the problems solved?
Iternal memory is 31 seconds for Standard (44100 Hz) mono sampling. In case that you have blank internal memory (no samples in bank A/B). You can check remaining sample time of your internal memory by pressing REMAIN button when you are in bank A/B and if are not in Pattern mode.
You could save samples from internal memory to card (Cancel + Bank C/D button, then 1-8 pad) - page 49 in manual
Delete all samples in internal memory (Cancel + Delete, then Bank A/B button) - page 34 in manual
After that you delete all from internal memory, you should have 31 seconds of sampling time in your internal memory.
(also you can load samples back from card to internal memory) (Cancel + Bank A/B button, then 1-8 pad) - page 50 in the manual

Is the problem of your internal memory caused by this? That you have already sampled something to it?

[Pippiz]

Wondering if this problem got solved by deleting the internal memory?

Experiencing crashes related to what seems high output volume (like you mentioned)....