Eventide H3000/H3500 ROM Upgrade to 2.

17 Instructions
This installation requires you to work inside the machine and perform
some minor soldering. If you do not feel comfortable doing this sort of
work, contact you local electronics repair person or hackerspace for as-
sistance or price request to have someone do the work for you. It typical-
ly takes an experienced tech 20 minutes to do this start to finish.

DON’T INSTALL THE CHIPS BACKWARDS.

The socket and chip both have a “notch” on one side.
Sometimes the way the label faces does not match the label of the chip
you took out. Follow the notch, not the label.

Please note!!!! Unlike other vendors, who are using the same parts as was used in
the H3000/H3500, I am using brand new American made Atmel branded chips.
The benefit of these are they are not susceptible to bit rot (unpredictable data cor-
rutpion basically) whereas the original parts are only guaranteed good for 10 years
since manufacture.

Now the main issue you may encounter is the new Atmel chips use less power and
respond quicker. This is a good thing in almost all cases except that the H3000
jumper cut modification needs to be done more carefully to prevent the TMS320
Error. This is because due to the higher sensitivity and quicker response speed of
the newer chips, the cut must be done well. The other thing is if your molex power
cable is going bad or is coming loose then you may encounter issues like flickering
display backlight or VU meter and I urge you to solve these issues before attempt-
ing to upgrade to the new OS, since it uses additional address lines that are left dor-
mant on OS 2.16 and lower.

The Molex power cables are getting very old and were known for coming loose too
easily even back in the 80’s. Again, if you are having any issues at all with the unit
related to power please try to have it solved before installing the new chips.

The main sources of problems after install are the following: jumper not done cor-
rectly, Molex power cable to the left of the chips came loose, backup battery chip
out of power, or buildup of dust in sockets (solved with a can of compressed air).
Lastly we need to initialize the unit so be sure to save any custom patches.
Now that you are aware of what you need to know, let’s go ahead.
Tools
Screwdriver (philips) for the lid
Flat head screwdriver or IC extractor tool for the chips
Small knife (scalpel, X-acto) for making the jumper cut, and scraping off the
green protective coating
Soldering iron to make the solder bridge

Step 1.
Take the top cover off and then unscrew the AC power cable socket
from the unit as some chips are hidden under it.

Step 2.
Use a flat head screwdriver or IC remover tool to remove any ROM
chips in your unit. It is likely that not all 5 are occupied. If this is the
case it’s best to spray some compressed air in the sockets to remove any
dust that’s built up over the years.

Step 3.
Install the new chips. If you are looking at the inside of the machine like
the picture above, the notches all face the left (the side of the blue stripe
on OS ROM #1). On the OS #1 chip, line up the chip to the right side of
the socket.
Step 4.
Get your knife ready to do the jump and cut mod. Look for the jumpers
labeled X5 / X6

Picture by Don Solaris on gearslutz.com

First scrape off some of the protective green coating lightly so that the
pads turn a different color as shown above. Use your multimeter’s con-
tinuity mode before making the cut to be sure you’ve removed the anti-
conductive layer. This is important or you won’t know if you did it right
later so do it and be sure you can test the two that are already linked up
you can see there is continuity.

Then make the cut, go nice and slow and do it a few times. Set your mul-
timeter to continuity mode and test between connection that gets cut to
be sure the meter is not seeing a connection.

Once you did that, simply put a blob between the two other spaces. You
are all set.

Step 5.
Initialize the unit on its first boot up with the new chips. BEFORE pow-
ering on, hold the Function key down. Then while holding it down pow-
er it up. It should say EVENTIDE H3500 and some other stuff.
If it does you did a good job.
If it doesn’t, please check the common issues on page #1.