Replace a Yamaha PSR-S900 Keyboard LCD Display

Yamaha PSR-S900 Arranger Keyboard Full-view

I have one of these (Yamaha PSR-S900 Arranger Keyboard Workstation) and after 7 years, the display started going defective – half of the screen was duplicated, lines running through the middle of the display.

Yamaha PSR-S900 LCD Display Going Bad (defective)

This renders use of the keyboard relatively impossible (because there is still a composite video out that can be sent to a portable DVD/LCD player, which will still work for the purposes of reading what’s on the display – your patch selections, mixer settings, scoring, sheet music, file selections, etc.)

I hit eBay and found a few replacement display units for about $150 (shipped from China, but made in Japan), and figured it would be worth trying (after all, a new PSR-S950 still runs about $2000.)

The replacement looks like this:

Example PSR-S900 replacement LCD image from eBay

There’s a single pair red/white power lead with a small white modular plug used to connect it to the high-voltage power daughterboard. (my plug had one fewer white connections, so I used a modeling knife to trim off the extra middle connector).

Example PSR-S900 LCD Display replacement – Reverse-side

The display itself connects via a 10-wire flat ribbon connector that is press-fit into the LCD’s connector. These are the somewhat fragile, but when carefully removed, basically easily re-inserted into the same receptacle (similar to re-wiring a video game console mod.) In the photo, this receptacle is on the right-center side of the display.

Since I didn’t happen to have the service manual, we dive in with the screwdriver (all phillips-head).  Flipping the keyboard over and laying it on a mattress (to avoid scratches,) you’ll find 14 3/4 inch panel screws,  4 slightly longer 1-1/2 inch panel screws used in the center holes of the keyboard, and about 24 larger headed 1-inch panel screws connecting 2 wood panels to the speakers and bottom frame.  You get to remove ALL of these to get the bottom and top shells separated (just keep them in separate dishes/jars.)

The bottom assembly sort of resembles this view from a PSR-1500 (for general reference – the PSR-S900 is more symmetrical in design) The larger screws are connecting the bottom boards to the 2 speaker enclosures and then attaching the wood panels to the bottom plastic shell; the smaller screws go into those taller pyramid-looking tower holes in the bottom case:

PSR-1500 Lower Case Assembly Diagram

This is an interior view of where the LCD is actually mounted (underneath the front panel; this view is of the bottom of the top half of the keyboard):

PSR-S900 LCD Display – front panel mounting (viewed from below)

To access this view, you will be removing the 6 mounting screws holding the CPU board box (the large aluminum vented box sitting on top of the LCD panel area.)  There are grounding wires on 3 sides of this box that are simply attached with more of the small panel screws.  You can either remove the screws that attach the box to the mounting posts, or the screws that hold the posts to the top assembly (whichever ones you can access most easily.)  The only connections I removed to access the LCD were the ethernet cable plugging into the CPU box, and the 2 white multi-wire connections that plug into the back-panel connector board (the one that has the USB plugs, video connectors and MIDI In/Out – it’s mounted to the top (silver) case assembly):

Back panel connectors – top (silver), bottom (black)

Once the CPU box is unmounted and moved aside (untaping the wires that are taped to the box), you can usually access the first 2 (of 4) screws mounting the LCD to the front panel (these are the 2 closest to the keyboard.) You can remove just the screws attaching the LCD to the aluminum mounts (you do not need to remove the mounts themselves).  To access the other 2 (the ones towards the back panel), if you don’t have a right-angle screwdriver that can fit under the back-panel connector board (about 1-inch clearance), you can remove the 6 screws holding the connector board to the top case assembly (4 of these have bendable wire tie-downs on them; the other 2 seem to hold the mylar foil shielding tabs.)  There is also a single screw that connects the coaxial video connector to the back panel that must also be removed to move the board.

Yamaha PSR-S900 Interior View Open Case Assembly

Inside my particular model (which might have been an earlier build than the one my replacement LCD was designed to fit) the high voltage board was connected with a longer set of leads to the defective LCD.  So I unmounted it, rotated it clockwise 90 degrees to move the connector closer to the LCD, and re-mounted it using a single screw to hold it in-place again.

After un-mounting the defective LCD, I removed the existing ribbon connector and before mounting the new one, re-attached the ribbon into the new LCD (drawing a line with a marker on the ribbon helps you remember how deep it was plugged in before).  Plugged in the HV power lead and tested the power up to confirm the new display actually works (the first time, there were a bunch of alternating shadows, indicating I hadn’t seated the ribbon connector properly.)

4 screws back in to hold the LCD, 6+1 screws to re-mount the connector board, 6 more to remount the CPU box (and re-connect the ground wires, and 2 of them hold the box shut), then you can shut the case and replace all of those other screws you took out that hold the case together.

Nothing particularly technical – mostly a bunch of screws and tape.  And about an hour and an eBay purchase later, the keyboard is back up and running fine.

Advertisement

2014-December Shinnyo Podcast – Introduc

2014-December Shinnyo Podcast – Introductions and Listening – 2014-December Shinnyo Podcast – Introductions and Listening Why Do We Listen? Flat-lining Conversations Listening As-if Your Life Depended On It Increasing the Value of Your Time Spent Listening Subscribe to this Podcast (RSS) or iTunes or via Flipboard In order to communicate effectively, we just need to listen. As much as we may like to … Continue reading 2014-December Shinnyo Podcast – Introductions and Li… http://ow.ly/2SpCHR

2014-December Shinnyo Podcast – Introductions and Listening

2014-December Shinnyo Podcast – Introductions and Listening

• Why Do We Listen?
• Flat-lining Conversations
• Listening As-if Your Life Depended On It
• Increasing the Value of Your Time Spent Listening

Subscribe to this Podcast (RSS) or iTunes or via Flipboard

Hearing versus Listening

In order to communicate effectively, we just need to listen. As much as we may like to hear ourselves talk, it is the first reflections by our listening partner, whether a single person or an audience of thousands, that determine whether what we are saying is getting through, or politely being heard, but not necessarily understood. Listeners also need to want to listen. The motive that drives active listening could be psychological, emotional, technical, educational, financial, or even spiritual and metaphysical in nature. But divining the purpose behind the listening is later on during the conversation.  For now, we need to start somewhere, and that place is the beginning of any communication – the introduction.

Sometimes it is as simple as saying, “Hello.” But often that is met in return by an automatically polite response of another, “Hello.” Or, “Hi.” Notice how that sort of puts the conversation right back to where it started? The communication became a statement without an action, like saying, “I’m here.” And, “I am too.” Gets nowhere pretty quickly.

The same situation happens with the opening, “Hi, how are you doing?” if the respondent replies, “Fine.” If you left the conversation there, it’s already dead. Taking that one step further, let’s say the respondent is engaged in the conversation and replies, “Fine. And how are you?” If you replied to that with, “Fine.” Voila’, another dead conversation.

How do we fix this situation? You could read any number of books on etiquette, communication arts, or even dating and memorize a bunch of static conversation starters, but since we like getting to the point, it’s about listening – Active Listening. In order to have active listening, we have to care about the communication being sent.  We have to have a vested interest in hearing and understanding what is being said. Strangely enough – that interest or motivation does not have to just be compassion (though it’s a nice place to start.) Sometimes we listen because of fear, such as cases where, if we make a mistake in listening, it costs us something whether financial, emotional, or even physical.So when appearing in court before a judge, or a doctor talking to us about a disease or problem that’s been diagnosed, we tend to listen much more carefully than if the motivation were more cosmetic or political in nature.

We learned (at Guitar Center) that when a person comes in the door, there’s a purpose for their visit, and our job was to figure out what that person’s motivation was – and if at all practicable, meet it by selling them something, or providing a service. So, we’d start with the usual, “Hi,” but quickly follow that with something that would lead to giving us more information about the person’s motivation. That follow up was not always verbal (some people are naturally less talkative than others) so we also learned to observe behavior (Where in the room is the person looking? Are they touching particular items with interest? Does the way they are dressed give us any clues as to why they are here?)  Asking yourself, “Why are they here?” helps frame your own intent in the conversation.

For any interaction, if you start valuing the time involved, for both yourself as well as the other person, you start realizing the precious value of time and especially in service industries, when there are many people to serve, wasting time on chatty smalltalk not only wastes the time of the other people  in the conversation, but leaves everyone else waiting. They might need even more answers, or create the most frustrating situation, when someone just wants to get their transaction over with, and the service person is tied up in a lengthy talk with someone who will take hours if given the opportunity.

Your best interests are served for both of you in a conversation to become aware of what the other person needs, assess the situation with efficiency and determine an actionable path of solution. How many times have you encountered a conversation which started off with an innocent, “How are you doing?” and the other person immediately launches into a non-stop description of their problems, situation, troubles, tribulations and didn’t take a breath to ask if you actually were ready to listen to that?  Think about which words you are choosing during introductions, as there is often an implied nature to these innocuous commonly chatty ways to start a conversation, but the key to changing the value in these conversations is to start with words much closer to your intent.

We were trained to become acutely aware when someone randomly came in and wanted to basically either tap all of our knowledge by asking every conceivable question, or was there to basically “vent.”  And if the time wasn’t appropriate to entertain such a conversation (whether we didn’t have the immediate patience to listen at the time, or there were too many other people waiting for our attention), we halted everything and set up an appointment in the future where we could reserve time to go through all the details needed (and pay the proper amount of attention to the person’s needs.)

As you begin opening your awareness to how other people communicate with you, you might find yourself being surrounded by more and more people seeking your advice or counsel, or simply looking for someone to listen.  Try not to sacrifice your own valuable time and quality of presence by feeling as though you need to make up for listening quality with lengthy listening quantity.  Develop your deep and thorough listening skills – listening with intent. At some point, your ability to listen may have more impact in another person’s life than your ability to talk.