I have an M1 and admittingly don't know that much about it. But the strangest thing happened...so here goes:

I was making drum tracks when it got stuck in record mode(the lights on the 'rec' & 'sart/stop' buttons wouldn't go out no matter what I pressed. So I turned it off and back on again. When it came back on, the display screen had the program number, but where the name should be are a bunch of symbols. I can go through the various menus, but there's some stuff that I cannot change, and those strange symbols in different places. There's also no sound at all know.

Any ideas??? Has anyone ever heard of this happening? The only thing I can think of doing is pulling the battery. (I never got a battery low message either)

Any info will be appreciated. Thanx.

I would suggest you to initialize your M1 by powering it up with INT, CARD and COMBI buttons pressed. This procedure will kill all your configurations and patches but it seems that they're already lost. If you're lucky, you'll read INIT PROG at the display. Then you may upload a sysex message with a backup of your own configuration (if you had made a backup) or at least with the factory configuration. Don't forget to enable the sysex comunication at the GLOBAL menu.
Hope it works.

César