Re: Dead DX7 Mark I - Repair questions -- Help!

Hi everyone - Just wanted to follow up per progress per my dead DX7 and the E! board. 

 Well, the great news seems to be that all of this seems to involve the E! board. Reseating and cleaning the contacts seemed to at least get it booted and running.
 

 The first issue that I'm still struggling with is ensuring that the back-up battery works...although changing it out with a brand new one seems to have had little effect. I was able to remove the battery successfully and solder two wires coming from the board; I still have to order a CR2032 battery holder and permanently install it. Meanwhile, the connections to the two wires and a fresh CR2032 battery seem fairly tight - but it keeps losing the contents of memory for whatever reason.
 

 As for the E! board, it doesn't seem very stable so far. MIDI out didn't work in a few instances...and when it did at one point I was missing a bunch of notes when pressed. Another time, the DX7 booted but was missing the internal banks 8-10. Often I was getting the "RAM is Corrupt!" message...and I'm guessing that it'll come back once the battery changes. However, I did a re-seat of the E! board...removed both the E! EPROMs and cleaned and reseated them...along with the stock SRAM at IC20 - so the "RAM is Corrupt!" message seems less frequent.
 

 I'd love for the E! board to work properly for the MIDI functionality...but at this point I'm wondering if I'm best off just doing an E-ectomy, ordering another SRAM chip, and flashing my own SER-7 EPROM and calling it a day. Any thoughts, just let me know. Thanks! - Seth