Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Restaurant at the End of Universe Hitchhikers - Service, Repair, Custom Leads & Interfaces Sorting out some G65 flakiness

I’ve been struggling to sort out some gremlins in my main system, which is anchored by a 2010-vintage G65 acquired second hand from a member of this parish a few years ago. After plenty of reconfiguration I still had a persistent distortion problem with the center channel, occasionally lost configuration, and sometimes the G65 wouldn’t boot.

The recommendation for misbehaving G65s is always to re-seat the cards, so I took out the approximately 8,000 screws necessary to get the lid off and remove the back panel, re-seated all the cards, but nothing much changed … dammit. But in doing so, I noticed the gold finger-tracks on the cards were looking grimy and oxidized, so after a bit of Googling thought I’d follow the advice of the PC restoration crowd and clean them using isopropyl alcohol (IPA).

Looking more closely at the cards, all the digital cards looked pretty good and cleaned up well. The analogue cards looked like they had some heat-related discoloration, they were definitely grimier, and took a whole bunch more time and effort to get them back to respectable condition with the help of the IPA and a big pile of cotton buds.

This does seem to have sorted the issues - the center channel distortion has vanished, and the whole system seems much more stable and reliable. So that’s a win, and if you’re experiencing G-series issues then I’d recommend giving it a try. Given the processors come in audio-looking boxes we tend to think of them as the same as our preamps of decades past, but in fact they’re basically just custom PCs - so we should probably maintain them more as (in my case) 15 year old vintage computers.

And as an aside, if you’ve ever set the fan option for the G65 to “when needed” or similar in MConfig, don’t waste your time with the setting. In my model year at least, there’s no fan in there.

Hope this helps someone at some point!

I just purchased a G65 second hand from eBay. It looks to be basically new. Even has that new electronic smell.

You mention that in the config file there is an option to enable a fan but the processor doesn't have one. Do you know if there is a connector like a PC to install one. If so I think I may purchase a ultra quiet PC fan and install it.
Also, what operating system does the Meridian config program run on. Is Windows 10 the latest or can I run it on Windows 11?
TIA

The Mconfig software runs fine on w10 and 11.
I don't think the G65 has a fan header like the G61/G68 does; outfitted my G61SL with a fan, so got an extra for the G65 but the fan header was missing if my memory is correct.
I did not find my G65 got very hot, so I left it as is.

The fan header seems to have disappeared at some point in the G61RSL production. Seems petty, TBH saving a cheap connector and a transistor. Pads are still there on the board of my G61RSL, but simply not populated. Fully Populated in both my G61R although no fan installed at the factory for either. I presume the backplane for the G65 is identical to the G61.