My next question is what is the recourse for a 1st Gen board failure?
Yes, just find someone with soldering skills to repair your 1st gen failures. Typically it's a FET failed stuck on caused by extreme events on the output of a channel, or the known voltage leak of a 1st gen. I've repaired a few at this point.
EDIT: Again to be honest, given the cost of these replacement power boards and the fact that many boards with typical failures of just a few FETs (which is way cheaper), it's great to have this option from MTH parts when you cannot repair a damaged power board, but one would hope the typical repair job is way less than the cost of this new board. It's when a board is so damaged, many components failed, then OK, this brings a $500-600+ transformer back from the dead, then you can justify the cost) of a new complete replacement board. Also, MTH sells and lists the common FETs and capacitors, a few other common components.
Second part is, I know it's not supposed to work, but back when these boards were impossible to get, I ran into a situation where I adapted old power board into a new Z4K unit. Again it was damaged, boards were not available, the standard FET replacement did not resolve the channel problem, and then I found a way to adapt. Again, this is an early 4 pin style power board- retrofitted into a later model Z4K housing and transformer. I also got a used matching early control board when I did this.
I cannot guarantee this works both ways, but I clearly have a 4 pin power board, plugged into a 5 pin transformer and I know this combination did work.
Supposedly, the power boards and control boards are matched pairs and you are not supposed to mix.
That would imply if you update an old transformer to a new power board, then in theory, to match, you also update the front panel digital control board. The only connector different is that AC low power logic 5 pin connector to the main core transformer.
EDIT: Again suppose you did upgrade an early model transformer that was damaged and only new version serial number boards were available. Then you in theory need a matched new style front panel control board.
and
and would have to adapt the 4 pin power supply cable on your early serial number core transformer to power the logic to be able to plug into the 5 pin connector on the new power board.
And- none of this is official or supported.
