Hi,

I am the owner of Chroma Polaris serial #01576, which has been sitting
idle for many years now in my basement. It has gotten very little use
and cosmetically it looks pristine, but of course with parts like these
membrane switches you can't really tell if they work just by looking.

I had not been aware that these machines had batteries inside, so of
course the first thing I found when I opened it up was that the
batteries (original equipment, apparently: they are Matsushita D cells
labeled in Japanese) had leaked all over the battery compartment. I
took them out and temporarily wired in a partly used 3V lithium cell
from a camera - if I get the machine working, I'll fix up the battery
compartment later. It still wouldn't boot up, so according to the
instructions in the service manual I tried to adjust the resistors on
the power supply. I don't have a scope, just a handheld tester, but I
thought I'd try. First R17 until the LED came on, which allowed the
machine to boot up but not make any sounds. Then R9 to adjust the
voltage across P2-P3 - it started around 4.7, and with R9 turned all
the way I couldn't get it above 4.85V. The spec is 5.00V +/- 0.01.
Does that mean I need a new power supply? Is it possible to still get
parts for these things? I'm willing to tinker a bit.

I'm reluctant to ship this behemoth across the country hoping that it
might be fixable. I saw at rhodeschroma.com a mention of a repair
shop near Boston that doesn't seem to exist any more. Does anyone
have a lead on whether I might be able to find someone local, or at
least near the northern NJ to Boston corridor, who can fix these?

Thanks in advance for any advice.