Korg OASYS Workstation
How to change the battery and add more memory

Korg OASYS battery and memory upgrade background

This is my obsessive-compulsive disorder kicking in.  But on the acquisition of any electronic instrument, including synthesisers, which contains a battery I will replace the battery with a new one.  

My rational is simple. I have no idea when the battery in the instrument was the last changed and I do not want my new instrument to die mid creative flow, loosing all my work stored in the memory.  Remember in the early days of electronic musical instruments the memory was volitile and without a battery when power was switched off anything in that memory would be lost.

The Korg OASYS is a computer driven synthesiser, and all voice / combi / sequence / samples are stored on the hard drive.  

While I was inside the machine I also installed some more memory.

Korg OASYS Installing more memory and a new battery – Part 5

With the operating system and all the engines sorted, this video covers a proper bit of hardware work: fitting another 1GB DIMM and, while the Korg OASYS is open installing a new battery to replace the old, presumably flat, coin cell. Getting inside means removing the end panel, held on with five long screws, followed by an aluminium rear plate on eight more, before the control panel itself can be lifted and folded back to expose the computer section underneath.

Working my way carefully past the ribbon cables and the fan I hadn't realised was in there, I found the existing 1GB DIMM sitting in its slot and pushed the new one home alongside it, with a firm push needed to seat it properly. Right next to the memory I could see the coin cell sitting in an easily accessible holder, which made fitting the Korg OASYS new battery, a standard CR2032, a straightforward job of levering out the old three-volt cell and pressing the fresh one into place.

Before closing everything back up I gave the whole cavity a good hoover, since there was a surprising amount of dust built up around the airflow path from one end of the keyboard to the other, and had a proper look at the motherboard, processor and expansion slots along the way. Once reassembled, the machine booted straight up showing a full two gigabytes of memory, confirming both the RAM upgrade and the Korg OASYS new battery fit had gone in cleanly and the job was done.

Korg OASYS Post battery change procedure – Part 6

Following on from fitting a new battery in the Korg OASYS in the previous video, I was still getting a warning telling me the battery voltage was low and asking me to replace the battery and set the time and date, even though the battery itself had already been swapped for a fresh one. A bit of digging around online suggested this is a fairly easy fix, and simply comes down to the fact that replacing the cell alone doesn't clear the clock error, which still needs resetting by hand afterwards.

To sort it I pressed the disk button from the bank of six mode buttons, went into utility mode, and from there into the set date and time screen, where the machine was showing the 4th of January 2003, its default reset point whenever the Korg OASYS a new battery installed. Working through the keypad I entered the correct year, month and day, hit enter after each one, checked my watch for the time, and typed that in too before backing out to reboot.

Once it came back up the error had cleared completely, which was a relief, and it gave me a chance to explain why this actually matters: the OASYS is really a computer underneath the keyboard, time stamping every file it saves to the hard drive, so a dead clock caused by a failed Korg OASYS battery means every new file gets stamped with the wrong date and time, making it very hard to find your recent work again. The same applies to the Kronos, so it's well worth running through this procedure any time you change the battery on either machine.