“I have a Kurzweil K2000 and want to upgrade to the latest OS. I understand chips have to be replaced for this. How difficult is it to do?”
It depends. Newer machines aren’t too difficult to upgrade if you have a chip puller and aren’t intimidated by working with components on the inside of a sophisticated machine like this. The upgrade consists of two EPROM chips known as “engine chips” in the Kurzweil. One is the HI engine chip and the other is the LO engine chip; together they contain the data that makes up the operating system. These are found under the LCD display on the backside of the main PCB. Looking from the back of the unit with the MIDI jack facing you the chips will be in this order: (from left to right) Engine HI – SetupHI – engine LO – Setup LO. The chips should be clearly labeled. To upgrade the chips all you do is remove the Engine HI chip with a chip puller and install the new Engine chip HI. Then do the same process for the Engine LO chip. You will have to make sure that the notch at the top of each chip is in the same position as the chip that you removed. (The notch will be facing the PRAM socket or, in other words, away from you). If the version that you are replacing is lower than 3.0 then you will have to move the nearby jumper pin from 1&2 to 1&3. The jumper pin is located right above the chips.
This was the highly abbreviated tutorial. If you are not experienced in these matters you should definitely consult with a qualified technician as you can do serious damage to the machine. Further, if your machine currently has a software version below 2.0 you should consult a service technician. In order to bring pre-2.0 machines up to current specs a number of modifications need to be done, and some of these can be quite involved depending upon which version of motherboard you have. There is much more to the story of K2000 history and upgrades than is presented here. You can find some of it by searching the TTOTD archives. Here is one link to get you started: 04/12/200 TechTip