Dark Time firmware update
Posted under Musical Technology at .
Tags: Dark Time, Doepfer, failures, hardware, repair, sequencer
The Dark Time had a failure. Not really sure why at this point, but when I started it up yesterday it showed an odd pattern of lights and was entirely unresponsive. Repeated power cycling. And I’ll admit that’s a kind of pretentious-sounding phrase especially as applied to something you do just switch on and off rather than go through a more macroscopic shutdown/startup process, but it’s a bit more concise than ‘turning off and on again’. Did nothing apart from eventually change the pattern of lights.
So I thought, let’s check the power supply. The Dark Time according to the labelling uses 12V AC and this is the original adaptor I got with it (though not Doepfer own-brand, which may be normal), and is also rated 12V output. It’s actually giving 16V no-load, which seems a little high. Some PSUs limit the voltage until they detect a load but starting up high is less common. But a little online probing tells me that some Dark Times were supplied with 15V supplies, so maybe this is in-range. Powering the thing with 12V AC from a lab supply makes no difference. [1]