PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Can anybody tell me, how long you can use a pulsar card? I mean, a car runs about 300.000 KM. How many years can you run a pulsar card if you use it regularly?

And did anybody out there have a broken pulsar card before? What did you do? Is there something like a guarantee or repair service? Or did you have to buy a new card then?

INdeed it would be a good idea to supply us with a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures just like they do with harddrives.

Ronald

Those numbers with harddrives are worth nothing. How can they know, that a new drive will live longer, than it took to design it from scratch. Lifetime of a Creamware card depends on the way you use it. If you overclock, smoke or fry food in the same room, the lifetime will drop. Also changing "weather conditions" can be tough on electronics. Shure there is a guarantee - nothing special, but not less either.

if you make lotsa songs, the sharcs will be empty much faster

lol Hubird

My first cards, 2 Pulsar1's, which came w Pulsar OS 1.0 are still running without any problem, at a friends place. They're about 5 years old.

Maybe in 10 years we can make up an average lifetime for them, but not now. I guess when treated right, they should last very long. I think the first cases of 'failure by age' still have to be reported... Even those first generation cards are too young to fail.

There's no mechanical parts on the dsp cards, like there is on hard drives. And mostly it's those that wear: motor, heads,... I didn't know there was such a thing for PCI cards - do you have an example of other cards with a 'life time'?

My cards live over two years now.
It´s like a girlfriend when you give her love they will stay at your side, as long as you please them.



_________________
Music starts where any language ends

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ChrisWerner on 2003-07-11 11:01 ]</font>

My Pulsar 1 was manufactured 27.11.1998, since then it has been used as a demo-card at the norwegian distributor at that time.
I bought it used from them after they did no longer distribute CW stuff.
You can clearly see on the backplate and opticals, that they have been used a LOT.
Visible wear and tear.

It still works like a dream!
I am only going to sell it soon, because I have ordered a Scope SRB in its place.

It would be a flipping nightmare if my $2,000.00 Pulsar2 ran out of steam...

I don't want to read this thread anymore, mommy.

LOL

Neither want I! Can’t you think about any other thing? Wow! How terribly scary this thought is… For me it’s not the worry that the card may burn, the real worry is that I’m sure I can’t afford one for at least a couple of years… You can be sure, I would open a suicidal thread instead… and would talk about my last days in this earth, cos I would have to through myself from the top for the Everest… Well, thinking again, the ticket to the Everest would pay my card… no… no, no, I would buy a new one!!!

With electronic bitsers I reckon the capacitors are good for five years, depending on quality...maybe longer if they use higher end components. Any longer is a bonus.

So divide $2000 into five years and the card is costing you about $400 a year, or about $8 a week. I consider that pretty brilliant value if you are a serious user.

The technology is likely to be outdated before the card dies.

Creamware assure me they put at least one "Hit" song into each card at the factory.... some may have more. If you haven't found your's, better get back to work before the capacitors run out.

Caps should last longer than 5 years, even cheap ones. I would say at least 10 years before you should start wondering whether they are drying out. Even then it would probably be a manufacture fault causing it.

At any rate, keep the card cool. Computer components love to be kept cool. Apart from obvious meltdowns, heat can also cause more subtle problems like stressing solder joints causing hairline fractures over time.

Also supply the computer with clean power if you can afford it e.g. inline UPS.
Ever since I've had an ups I've found out how much variation there can be in the local AC power supply. The UPS I use gives audio indications whenever there is over voltage or brownouts or surges etc.

should work longer than 3 or 4(or 10 if you upgrade a lot) computers.......

My is about 5 years old...

The one with 4 DSPs, it's still running today with no problems at all

BTW, the est. life time of a Pentinum (that's the original one we are talking about) is 75 years based on Intel research.

I think it depends on how you treat your hardware. I am suprised that the "software" still works today!!!

I think what you really should be worried about is the software avaliability for future operating systems.

On top of all that, I have it running on a P4A northwood, 1.6Ghz OC to 2.3GHz with 145FSB. No problem at all, but the PCI bus speed stays at 33Mhz in my case (I believe!!!)

Hope my card lives long, knock on wood

Been hooked since version 1.3 back in ....well, a long time ago
Now running a full setup (1 PulsarI and 2 PulsarII SRB's), and no hint of a problem, eventhough one of the SRB's has aquired some strange white markings on the edge of the PCB.

The only real killer is HEAT, keep your boards as cool as possible, I read somewhere that increasing the running temperature by 5-6°C may half the lifetime of a chip. SHARC's tend to get relatively hot, so I've added some extra fans blowing directly onto the boards, and are thinking about attaching a heatsink to keept them as cool as possible.

Cheers and good luck with your boards, everybody
Stubbe