My S90XS is around 5 years old and has worked flawlessly until now.  When I turn it on, the screen doesn’t go through its normal boot up, ending with the “Lay It Down” screen.  Instead, it displays a message that says “Searching for firmware updater”.  After a few seconds another message appears, which says “USB memory not found”.  As far as I know, I have done nothing to initiate this.  It just happened about a week ago when I turned the keyboard on.  In this mode, the keyboard will not accept input from any button (except to make it cycle through the same messages), and of course it does not play.  I have tried turning it off and back on, removing the power cord and plugging it back in, and tried to do a factory reset but, as I said, pushing any button has no effect.  I looked through the forum and tried searching but didn’t find anything on this problem.  Does anyone have any idea what is wrong?  I’d like to try anything you may suggest before spending a lot of cash.

Thanks,
Steve

Welcome to the forum.

Under normal circumstances, the S90 XS firmware can be updated by simultaneously pressing the [ ^ ](Cursor Up) and [UTILITY] buttons while powering on the S90 XS. At the time, the firmware would be on a USB flash drive inserted in the TO DEVICE port at the back of the S90 XS. If those buttons were pressed without a USB drive inserted, the error messages you’re seeing would be displayed.

I presume you’re not pressing those buttons - but your S90 XS “thinks” you are. One way that can happen is if something was spilled on the front panel, and there’s now a conductive path at the relevant switch contacts.

Any possibility there was an “accident” with a liquid?

Well, if there was, I don’t know about it.  We do have grandkids though so anything is possible.  What you say certainly makes sense; it seems the “key” to the problem is what made it go into this mode to begin with. I guess I need to open it up and see if it looks like there’s anything there.  What I’m afraid of is that it came from some kind of component failure and I’m going to have to buy a new board of some kind.  I expect that would be pretty big money.  I put in an email to Yamaha support and they sent me the names of a couple of local companies that might be able to work on it.  I already contacted one of them and got no response so I’m not too encouraged about taking that route.  Thanks very much for your comments.

And thanks for the welcome!

I’m not sure how obvious it will be to get to the top side of the control board where the switches are, and any possible spilled liquid might have found its way. I’d suggest first obtaining the service manual from Yamaha if you intend to investigate this yourself.

By the way, sometimes the problem isn’t obvious. I’ve seen spills which dry and everything seems normal until the humidity gets high, and residue becomes sufficiently conductive.

Of course, there might be some other cause of the symptom, but in my experience it’s worth checking for signs of a spill before considering something worse.

Best of luck.

Greetings.  I finally got the problem I related in the original post solved, and thought it might be good to pass on the solution in case anyone else experiences it.

Apparently, the keyboard wanted a firmware update.

Our youngest son was over and, being a former employee of Guitar Center and having some experience with various electronic problems, I asked him what he though about it.  He said, “Have you tried updating the firmware?” I told him I had not, since it was not my idea to update the firmware and I had no idea the keyboard could initiate this action on its own.  He said, “Let’s try it”.  So we downloaded the firmware update onto a USB drive from the Yamaha web page and plugged the USB drive into the keyboard.  Sure enough, the firmware updated just as it should and the keyboard went back to working.  I have had no further problem with it.

So I guess the moral of this story is, sometimes you just do what the keyboard says and it works.  I would be interested to know if others have experienced this or if you experience it in the future.  This would help me to confirm that my keyboard doesn’t actually have a mind of its own and that I’m not imagining things!

Regards,
Steve

steveriddle - 29 March 2018 11:24 PM

Greetings.  I finally got the problem I related in the original post solved, and thought it might be good to pass on the solution in case anyone else experiences it.

Apparently, the keyboard wanted a firmware update.

Our youngest son was over and, being a former employee of Guitar Center and having some experience with various electronic problems, I asked him what he though about it.  He said, “Have you tried updating the firmware?” I told him I had not, since it was not my idea to update the firmware and I had no idea the keyboard could initiate this action on its own.  He said, “Let’s try it”.  So we downloaded the firmware update onto a USB drive from the Yamaha web page and plugged the USB drive into the keyboard.  Sure enough, the firmware updated just as it should and the keyboard went back to working.  I have had no further problem with it.

So I guess the moral of this story is, sometimes you just do what the keyboard says and it works.  I would be interested to know if others have experienced this or if you experience it in the future.  This would help me to confirm that my keyboard doesn’t actually have a mind of its own and that I’m not imagining things!

Regards,
Steve

Thanks for getting back to us. That’s a strange outcome, but hopefully it will prove to be a permanent solution.

Normally I wouldn’t expect a firmware update to resolve the problem you originally described. However, I found this in the description for the version 1.06 OS…
‐ Improved the operational stability of the electronic components. This update may solve problems in which the instrument might not start in low-temperature environments.
...which in itself seems a bit strange. Perhaps that means something was changed in the bootloader routine, allowing for more tolerance of components which might have drifted from original characteristics.

Or perhaps the original firmware itself had become corrupted, “thought” it sensed buttons being pressed that actually weren’t, and loading the update eliminated the bad code.

Same thing happened to my Motif XF8, but inserting the usb with the corresponding software do nothing, except a message stating: This Updater is for Motif XF, please turn off.

I have no idea what’s going on, if corrupted date is the issue should be solved with the update, but is not.