Mark IV speaker volume faint and no longer adjustable.

[A Scott]

Wondering if anyone else has/had this problem:

When I play tracks with a background musical accompaniment, I can no longer control the volume of the speakers built into the piano.  The backing track plays but is very faint.  When I use headphones the volume works as expected.

Spoke to Yamaha this morning and was told that a board in the system needed to be repaired; and referred me to a shop in California that should be able to do it.  He also stated that unrelated to my issue, it was likely not if, but when in the future my hard drive would fail and I should consider my options.

So far, I understand them to be:

1. Back up what I can from the hard drive (Yamaha has locked many files that came with the piano; frustrating), take the unit out of the piano and ship it to California for repair of the board, and while they have it, have them replace the hard drive.  Cost-Approx $1,100

2.Replace the old MK IV system with the newer DKC 900 system for a purchase cost of $1995.00 plus @$5-600 installation cost.  Order it now and no certain time when it would arrive (could be fall 2022 or later) due to supply chain shortages.

Neither seems ideal, but clearly this is an issue I cannot repair myself.

I have 3 questions:

1.  Has anyone else had this same issue and if so, how did you resolve?

2. Has anyone else had a refurbish job done on their MK IV and what was your experience.

3. Has anyone else done a full replacement of the DKC-900 to a MK IV piano and what was your experience?

Simply trying to take an intelligent and informed course of action here.

All thoughts much appreciated!

Arthur Scott

[Kevin Goroway]

I've heard of this problem, so you aren't the first to experience it.

For the hard drive - there are instructions floating around to replace this yourself, if you feel up to it.  Many of us swapped out to a larger, quieter SSD ages ago, keeping the factory hard drive on the shelf "just in case."  Once that's done, periodic backups make sense.

For the low-volume audio, I don't know if it is possible, but I'd investigate using the (still working) headphone outputs into a headphone amp to bring the levels up to line-level, and then run those to the external speakers.  

I still consider everything after the MarkIV to be a "downgrade" so I'd do everything I could to keep my MarkIV functioning.

-Kevin

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[Arthur Scott]

That is helpful Kevin. Thank you.

This morning I had already started going down the path of using the line level outs with a preamp to a regular stereo amplifier and then regular speakers. I had not considered the headphone option, and I’m sure as you state, there’s an intermediary device to allow me to direct that output to speakers.

I had the same feeling about the newer platform not being as good as the old MK IV one even though the Yamaha representative tried to sell me on it. He did admit that they were some features that I would in fact lose.

I would be interested in the instructions for the SSD hard drive install along with the associated software for the piano to “boot up” and run. I considered this as well. I’m not afraid of the inside of a computer as I used to build them years ago for fun and to save$, but I certainly don’t consider myself an expert.

I’ll start doing some research on headphone to speaker preamp converter’s.

Thanks!

Arthur

On Feb 8, 2022, at 1:11 PM, 'Kevin Goroway' via Disklavier Support Group <disklavier-s...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/disklavier-support-group/1542017771.566081.1644343865746%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Owen Sayers]

Hi Arthur

I dug out this old email.   Not sure if it will have all the information you need.

Best wishes, and Good Luck

Owen

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/disklavier-support-group/A2A7FC0A-3104-4021-AB04-A29D5671E6B3%40gmail.com.

[Arthur Scott]

Thanks Owen. 

That sounds a wee bit more complex than I hoped for, given I don’t know Linux at all. 

This is helpful in any case as now I would probably get a 4TB Drive and be good for a while…. One would hope!

I’ll keep this for future reference…… much appreciated!

Arthur

On Feb 8, 2022, at 2:55 PM, Owen Sayers <owen....@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/disklavier-support-group/009701d81d25%24d05ab2b0%2471101810%24%40gmail.com.

[Geoff Ward]

Arthur

It is a fairly simple process to remove your hard drive, connect it to a PC with cloning software installed (eg, EaseUS Todo Backup) and clone you existing drive to a new hard drive.  You won’t be able to buy a new 80GB parallel ATA IDE (PATA) hard drive any more but you can get a 160GB PATA drive from New Egg for just $45.  You will also probably need PATA to SATA adaptors to be able to connect the drives to a PC.  I have done this and EaseUS Todo Backup works just fine with non-Windows disks.  I did it to a solid state 120GB drive hoping to speed up the Mark IV bootup and close down times, but it made so little difference to the times that it was not worth doing – but it worked just fine.

 

If this is all a bit much for you, your local computer store should be able to clone the existing HDD for you.  The cloning software will only use 80GB of the larger new disk, so don’t expect any greater storage capacity than 80GB.  It is nice to have a bootable backup of your whole HDD so that if/when it fails, you just swap the new disk in.  But you should install the new disk temporarily to make sure that the cloning process worked.

 

I have no suggestions regarding the speaker volume.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Kind regards

 

Geoff Ward

--

[Kevin Goroway]

MIDI files are *TINY*.  120gig drive is probably un-fillable, even if you put your entire pianosoft CD collection on there...

Don't be scared about the linux thing.  The word doc that is around (somewhere?  anyone?) has explicit commands that you need to do (though, you do want to be careful to get your source and destination correct)

There's no extra "software" to boot the MarkIV.  Once you put the duplicated drive in, it doesn't know anything has changed...there's just more space, and less noise.

-Kevin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/disklavier-support-group/FC70C93E-E586-4217-BE3A-D4F1D21BC0D6%40gmail.com.

 

Emboldened by Ken's experience, I set out to do the same thing… upgrade my Mark IV's slow and small and a little noisy IDE drive and replace it with a bigger, silent, cooler SSD drive.  I picked up a 128gig Transcend SSD from Amazon… ~$175

Note that you will also need a mounting kit, as 2.5" drives do not just fit into 3.5" drive bays… but a conventional  "Adapter-Kit-to-Mount-25-HDD-in-35-Drive-Bay" (google that) works perfectly, no holes to drill, and that comes with the cable to convert the 40-pin SSD connector to a conventional 44-pin IDE connector.

Note that the unit is secured to the bottom of the piano with a very simple but very TIGHT set of screws. If you're using a power tool, especially one that doesn't have variable speed, you'll probably want to loosen the screws by hand… otherwise you risk stripping the heads. Kudos to Yamaha for doing it right, there was zero chance of vibration/rattle when it's mounted like that.  Interestingly, I had a little trouble unmounting the HD as well; those screws were not only tight but, get this, GLUED as well. When I removed them, a dry ring of glue came out of the screw holes. I've never heard of doing that before, but I guess they wanted to be totally sure that drive wouldn't rattle/vibrate at all.

Unlike Ken, I didn't just clone the drive. I know my way around Linux well enough to do what I set out to do, which was create an image of the original drive, copy the image onto the new SSD and then extend the partition on the new drive where data is held.

I was expecting a hassle when I plugged in the drive to my computer via an IDE enclosure but was pleasantly surprised that the drive is partitioned in completely normal linux partitions with conventional file systems (with the exception of one partition that I couldn't read). The beauty of creating a disk image is that you don't need to "read" the data, just be sure you've made a faithful copy, which I did. It was therefore trivial to grab the contents of the original drive, apply that image to the new drive, and simply extend the data partition (it's not hard to tell which one that is… it's the last and biggest, and if you look into it, you'll soon find sound and midi and audio files.  

Oddly, one of the partitions (partition 5) is unreadable, or at least was unreadable to my OS. I'm not sure why, but it doesn't really matter.  As long as it's identical bit-by-bit, something will know what it's for. Once I'd finished creating the new SSD, I tried booting my computer with it and was happy to see it fire up. Of course it crashed when it couldn't find the piano hardware, but as anyone who's ever messed around with this sort of stuff knows, getting it to read and execute the boot sector is 95% of the battle. I was delighted to see the new, silent, cold drive do its thing… and once in the piano, it booted flawlessly.

Indeed, now I hear chirping when the piano silently boots up…either the CD or FD drive… and after that it's silent.  And FAST, super fast… it's no illusion, the menus on the PRC are instant.  Note that I had to completely reset the PRC once the new drive booted… since some internal variables on that unit must get set upon initialization, having the piano change completely confused the poor little PRC, and I started getting all sorts of "out of range" Java errors. No worries, pull the battery and wait a few seconds… all is good.

Also, while I was doing all this, I also picked up a WiFi extender as per someone else's suggestion since the PRC's range is brutal, as we all know.  I picked up a D-Link DIR-505 (~$60) and this really was a trivial install if you're at all technically capable. It comes with instructions, but here are the steps while fresh in my mind…. the thing is simply the size of a block transformer… it has a switch on the side for different modes.  Set it to REPEATER, and plug it in near the piano. In my case, I plugged it in under the piano where there's a little extension cord coming out of the unswitched AC power on the control unit. That's ideal because you can just leave the unit right there, jammed up with the piano's own cables and tucked in… you'll see what I mean, there's a perfect little recess in which it fits.  

To configure it, I used my iPhone. There's an iPhone app to install, which you can quickly get to by scanning the QR code on the instructions. Once installed, you change your iPhone to use the D-Link Wifi, and log into it (you're logging into the little unit now) with the UserID/PW that comes with it. Once you're connected to the WiFi, you open up the browser on the phone and browse to http:///dlinkrouter.local -- it's in the instructions. There you'll click a few OKs and then select which WiFi network you want to extend. One of the choices will be DKVxxxx -- choose that, hit OK and THAT'S IT.  The unit will reboot and while it was doing that, I took my PRC to the other room from where it's never been even close to working… and this time, it simply worked. It connected to the piano, and I can now control the piano from every room in the house. Awesome.

I love it when stuff works as easily as these two upgrades went… because they rarely do. :)

…..HK

On Jul 21, 2012, at 9:18 AM, carwizard wrote:

 

Great article. Thank you!

I have cloned drives in the past using Symantec and drive image years ago back in the win xp days. Must I use Star Tech? Is that the easiest? Thanks again

Take Care,

Neal Polan 

On Jul 21, 2012, at 8:49 AM, "Edward Mitoma" <twoth...@aol.com> wrote:

 

Wow, now that's an answer!  Thanks much for the details.  I build computers as well for a hobby.  So this all makes perfect sense.  I'm left without further questions.

Much appreciated!

Edward

Sent from my iPad

On Jul 20, 2012, at 9:36 AM, "kenruda" <k...@ruda.us> wrote:

 

Actually the whole process was fairly simple for me… however, I might point out that I do have over 35+ years experience tinkering with computer hardware and software. I have spent several years of my career building, updating, troubleshooting and repairing computers for a living. (I have also been upgrading Tivo hard drives for the last 10 years or so, which also run on Linux, so I felt that I was up to the challenge.)

I would strongly recommend that you make a backup using your Mark IV's remote. I back my piano up frequently, since I have many one-of-a-kind midi+audio sync recordings that I have made over the years that I would hate to loose.

I also waited 5 years to the day that I purchased my Disklavier, to let the warranty expire on the player before removing or opening the I/O Center.

Actually the original hard drive was an 80 Gig IDE drive. Although, I replaced it with a 120 Gig SATA3 SSD drive. I needed to use a SATA to IDE adapter. If I had to do it again, and I probably will.. I will order an IDE SSD drive.

Yes, I cloned the original hard drive and any HPA using a stand-a-lone (StarTech) hard drive duplicator that I have. It took just under 30 minutes to successfully clone the drive. I then examined the drive and found that media files were in the last volume of an extended partition. So I resized that extended partition to use the unused space of the new hard drive and then expanded the volume of that partition to use the rest of the space of that ext partition. Then I tried to reinsert the hard drive back into the original hard drive mount but the SATA to IDE adapter did not align up properly, so I had to remove the original drive mount (which is held to the underside of the cover of the I/O Center by four screws.) I then installed the smaller 2.5" SSD into a 3.5" drive mount and placed it in the center section of the I/O Center's lid where the other hard drive was. I had to drill two holes in the lid in that section to secure the new drive's mount to the underside of the I/O center's lid. I then connected the power and IDE cables to the SATA to IDE converter adapter and plugged it into the SSD. Carefully buttoned up the 12 screws in the lid and carefully reinstalled the I/O center back under the piano. Now they I/O center has much better ventilation since the old mount and drive covered some of the vent holes on the cover. After reconnecting and double checking all of the cables were properly connected, I plugged the power back into the Disklavier and turned on the Main power switch on the I/O center. The moment of truth came when I saw the power light blinking on the Media Center and saw each of the lights power up one by one. (I also noticed that the CD Drive on the Media Center chirps a couple of times ever so slightly at the start up of the booting process. I never heard this before since the original hard drive spinning up and clatter of servo that moves the read/write heads on the hard drive drown it out. The new drive is totally silent and has no moving parts!

The Disklavier boot's up in just under two minutes after a cold boot or shut down with this new drive. I don't think I ever timed it using the original drive. I did noticed that the screen on the PRC-100 seems to update faster. I can scroll up and down my 109 album under the PianoSoft section and the names of the titles populate in less than a second—much faster than before.

Since this update was successful, I plan on ordering an IDE SSD and replace the SATA3 drive. I was thinking about a 160 gig drive to see if the Mark IV's IDE controller can access and actually use a drive over 128 gig. That will leave me with a test drive that I can experiment with. I was thinking about removing all of my media thus actually test the "RESTORE" of my latest backup to make sure the media can successfully be restored that way. (I always hoped Yamaha actually tested this feature after each software release, but was scared to try it in fear of loosing original audio and midi sync recordings.) Has anyone actually had to restore? Anyway, now I have the original hard drive tucked away in my fireproof media safe—I may even make a spare copy and keep it at my parents house on the other side of the state… just incase the unthinkable would happen to my place or piano.

-Ken

--- In diskl...@yahoogroups.com, Twothbeave <twothbeave@...> wrote:
>
> Awesome! How difficult was the operation? I'll assume the existing drive is a SATA so the swap is simple once the unit is opened up. Did you clone the original 80gb drive? What utility did you use and did you partition it post installation of before. Such great news to know that this unshackling can be done with relative ease. The stock performance of the computer is shockingly bad. Nice that it's merely an I/O issue. Time to hit up
> Amazon or Tiger and order one up.
>
> Thanks for the most useful post I've yet read on this already gem
> Filled group!
>
> E
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jul 19, 2012, at 11:43 PM, "kenruda" <ken@...> wrote:
>
> > Last night I upgraded my Mark IV's 80 Gig Hard Drive to an 2.5" 120 Gig SSD (Solid State Drive). My Disklavier now boots up in just under two minutes and is completely silent when booting. So I no longer hear the hard drive spin up and the chitter chatter of the hard drive seeking as it reads different tracks. The new hard drive is physically smaller than the original drive and so I ended up removing the old mounting hardware that held the original drive and installed the new drive like before but so that it did not completely cover any of the vent holes of the case unlike the original drive and mounting hardware did. This will allow for far better heat dissipation than the original drive and so the system should run even cooler. Plus the new SSD drive generates less heat and uses less power than the original drive to begin with. I also see improved performance when searching and scrolling through songs with the Disklavier's hand held PRC-100. Over all screens seem to be less sluggish and refresh more quickly. I wish I had another Disklavier to compare with side by side. I have also expanded the extended partition and allocated more space to the volume where the media is stored-- so I went from about 19 gig free to about 59 gig free or about enough storage for at least 88 additional Smart PianoSoft Diskettes plus matching Audio CD with 74 minutes of audio each. But since most CD's contain less than 74 minutes I may have room for a few more. This is assuming that the Disklavier's software and database can accommodate that many. Does anyone know if there is a limit? (I have 109 entries or albums/folders in my system now under the PianoSoft section.)
> >
> >
>

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[A Scott]

Ok Kevin,

As long as with notice, you are on “standby” when I have a mess of hardware around me and nothing is working!  😂 

I’ll {{{{{{ try }}}}}}.  <—— that’s me shaking when I take my MK IV apart …..

Arthur 

On Feb 8, 2022, at 3:12 PM, 'Kevin Goroway' via Disklavier Support Group <disklavier-s...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/disklavier-support-group/371926122.707536.1644351152183%40mail.yahoo.com.

[A Scott]

I’ve had some great success!

Full documented details to follow shortly…..

(On workaround….)

On Feb 8, 2022, at 4:41 PM, A Scott <arthur...@gmail.com> wrote:



[Aaron Zornes]

Just cleaning up Disklavier emails...

 

Re: DKC-900 install .. I installed the precursor DKC-850 on my Mark III with no problem .... just a few screws, adding a different plate/mounting bracket provided by Yamaha as part of the kit ... and VOILA .. off and running

 

From: disklavier-s...@googlegroups.com <disklavier-s...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of A Scott
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2022 10:03 AM
To: Disklavier Support Group <disklavier-s...@googlegroups.com>

--