Problem with ADAT IO plate for Scope card

[ehasting]

Hello,

i have aquired a 15DSP Scope card (which seems to be 2 gen, based upon the preformance). But it suddenly became highly unstable.
The card has 3 ADAT ports.

i noticed that it was hard to get connection with Adat A, but by jerking the cable a bit.. i got it up..

but the whole computer froze.. and it happend time after time.. then when i got it up and running.. it froze after maybe 5 minutes or less.
So i tried to remove the card.. clean contacts etc. but no help.

My last attempt (which are still ongoing) was to remove the IO Plate exp. since i had this unstable adat, i figured it COULD be some loose contacts. But after removing the card and looking at it.. i cant see anything obvious.. (i probably need magnifier). But running the card without any io plate seems to have stabelized the system again?!?!?!

Could it be that the io plate was the fault? i was fearing it might was the DSP?!

[garyb]

it sounds like the i/o plate has some cracked solder on it. carefully reflowing solder may help.

[ehasting]

Well.. i have done some more now..
after a while testing it failed again with total freeze of the computer. I have cleaned all contacts and connected back the io plate.

I never get the Unexpected out of dsp load message now.. but it still randomly freezes the computer.

But now i can load up the dsp to 100%. freeze can occure when quitting scope enviroment.. or sometimes removing devices.

do i have a faulty card??

[ehasting]

Hmm.. reading around in some old post, a similar problem are due to heat issue..
I see that my graphics card (which are way beyond what i need for this computer) has two fans that blows on the dsp chips

While the card dont work very much.. the air is not cold.. probably not helping the dsp.

Could this be an issue?

EDIT: Downloaded a tool to clock down my graphic card.. and to increase the fans.. it somehow.. seems to be working!
Is the DSP VERY sensetive to temperature??! i will be thrilled if this is my problem..!

will run a maxed out project during the night with audio input and modular sequencer running to stress it .. hopefully it will be playing till dawn

[garyb]

dsps generate quite a bit of heat, so heat can be an issue.

make sure that "reset board, if idle" is unchecked in the card's properties page, if you are in xp or win7 32bit. if it's 32 or 64bit win7, you need to disable all the power management, even in the advanced options. also, you should go to system information\hardware resources\conflicts/sharing and see if any Scope cards are sharing irqs with other devices. if any are, then you may need to disable some or all of them.

[ehasting]

Well..

On the positive side, the "unexpected dsp.. bla bla" is totaly gone after my clean .
But it still freezes.. i had a stopwatch running, on screen. and last time now it took 36 minutes running in 90% dsp load.

I have unchecked the rest-board if idle and all power save features!

The auto-fan adjustments are disabled, and the graphics card are running on max fan all the time and are down clocked as much as possible!
But still i get the freeze!!

running on the: Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3, AMD Phenom 8650 (X3), 4GB (Windows7 32-bit) a luna2 and pulsar2 (my existing setup), was stabile!

The change is that i have swapped the Lunar2 with a Scope card ( 15 dsp). Is there any tool that i can use to diag. the cards?

[garyb]

no, there's no tool that i know of.

double check your bios and os settings as they may have changed. swapping boards doesn't mean everything is still the same.

if it were bad dsps, it's very doubtful that the software would even start.

[ehasting]

I will try running the card in the Mac later on! I can run on 100%dsp. So you are probably right about card!
I will check the bios again! Try to get it to assigne other irqs.

EDIT:
Also.. i might try to reinstall the Windows 7, since both Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 was installed on this computer.. it strikes me that the uninstaller could be leaving the system in a unstable situation due to debug versions of the library..

Btw.. i have bad feelings for windows xp.. but is it still recommended?

EDIT ver. 2.0:
Well, after reinstalling SCOPE it also reinstalled the Visual Studio redist package. and now i have been running stabile without freeze on scope for 5 hours and 40 minutes! and still going . Running on 30 % load.

[tomylee]

hey, how did it work out in the end? ) are you stable now, did you have to swap cards or what was the matter?

cheers
tom

[ehasting]

The story ended with me buying new motherboard +ram+CPU. And now everything work as a rock! Been playing with it for 3 days in a stretch.. Not even a windows crash! It feels. Like dedicated hardware!!

I also got 3 pci slots, so running 2x pulsar 2 and 1x scope (15dsp)

I guess i had faulty ram or something!

[tomylee]

ohh i see, never save on ram, I always get corsair or other known brands... never value or noname ram