A word of advice for MR-1 owners... Have a small paperclip in your pocket when out recording gigs with your MR-1. You just might need it one of these days.
I found out the hard way last night that the MR-1 firmware is randomly prone to going completely FUBAR for no apparent reason, leaving you unable to record or even shut down the unit. Turns out having a paperclip would have saved the day.
Here's what happened..
I had planned to tape a light jazz concert last night. I set up my equipment 1/2 hour before the show. Hooked up the mics, external power supply and preamp. Powered up the MR-1 and made sure everything was ok. Even started recording to make sure I was getting signals to both L and R. Everything checked out. Ready for a night of taping jazz. So I powered down and went to my seat. About 10 minutes before the opening act, I powered up the MR-1. It booted up fine. I hit the record button and NOTHING. The red recording LED didn't come on as usual. On the Level Meter screen there was an error message. Can't remember the exact message but it said something to the effect of there not being a file available. Strange, hadn't seen that before. Went into the menus. Everything was set correctly. So I decided maybe it just needed a reboot. I try to shut down the unit and get this error message "Cannot execute function" with an option to Exit. I select Exit with the P-dial. All I get is a blank screen with the backlight on. No menus, error messages, nothing. Just a blank screen. The unit is FUBAR at this point. Everytime I'd try to shut down I'd get the same "Cannot execute function" error. I waited several minutes hoping the unit might auto power down on its own. Nope. At this point getting the opening act recorded was out the window, so I waited an hour and tried again during the break before the main act. No dice. So I gave up at that point and just enjoyed the show. My big concern was that the hard drive had died. I'd have to send the unit in for repair and not be able to tape for several days. So I get home from the concert. Still unable to power down the MR-1. I noticed the tiny hole on the right side just below the volume buttons. A hard reset switch? I found a small paperclip, straightened it out and stuck it in the hole. It powered down! Powered it back up and it booted up fine. I tried recording and it worked. So I'm pretty sure the glitch was with the firmware, not the hard drive. I even hooked up the MR-1 to my PC and ran a disk check against the hard drive. No errors found. So I'm at a loss to explain how this happened. I've recorded quite a few times since I bought the MR-1 a couple months ago and never had any glitches like this until now. Fortunately last night was a jazz concert that I REALLY didn't need to tape since I'm not really into jazz that much. I'm so used to taping rock concerts that I thought I'd try recording something different for a change and see how the MR-1 does with big band instruments and piano. Now if this would have been the Smashing Pumpkins concert that I'll be taping in a couple weeks or another band I really wanted to tape, I would have been FUMING last night and just about ready to toss the MR-1 under a bus.
If someone from Korg is reading this, any idea what might have caused this to happen?? I've always been careful with the MR-1 knowing a hard drive is inside. I didn't drop or shake the MR-1 prior to my attempt to start recording last night, so I would rule out the hard drive especially since it now seems to be working fine and the disk error check in Windows came up with nothing. The only other thought was perhaps heat-related. It's HOT here in Phoenix, temps getting up to near 110. The MR-1 was subjected to 107 degree heat for about 15 minutes walking from the parking garage to the venue, but it was dusk, covered by my shirt and not being directly hit by the sun. Even if it had heated up during those 15 minutes, it had plenty time to cool down once I got inside. When I set up the recorder 1/2 hour before the show, it didn't seem warm at all and it was working fine at that point. It was 20 minutes later when it started acting up. I'll try to see if I can recreate the problem, but knowing Murphy's Laws, this issue probably won't crop up again until I'm ready to start taping a future show. If this is a bug in the firmware, I hope Korg can figure out the cause and get a fix out. From now on, I'm making sure I have a paperclip in one of my pockets just in case this happens again. I really hope this is not something that would crop up while the unit is in the middle of recording a show. Before I start recording, I can deal with it as long as I have a paperclip. If this happens during recording, BAD.
I'm curious, why isn't the hard power down switch mentioned in the MR-1 manual? I see it pictured in one of the diagrams, but there's no reference to it anywhere in the manual. Yes, in a perfect world no one should ever have to use that recessed switch to power down their MR-1 as the shut down slider button should do this everytime. But as I found out last night, there are still a few kinks to work out in the firmware that could keep the MR-1 from shutting down normally.
