Hi Brian,
Where do I start LOL. Tascam won’t be able to help as everyone involved in the MX2424 would have retired by now. Fortunately I was in a lot of communication with them when these things were new and I was carrying out Beta testing on software updates, until Tascam wound up the development team. Remember the software for the MX was written by TL not Tascam direct.
First up I never use Viewnet, always MXview as it is way better. Get MXview installed.
Do you have the latest version of the operating system installed in the MX. What RAM have you installed, I ask because if you have later operating software it needs to be the 256 version, you can check in the menu.
OK, it is very rare that the song has gone from the drive. Usually it is a registry file issue. However to recover the recording you need to be able to mount the SCSI drive on a PC using a SCSI card, once the card is installed you can plug the tower in to the PC, then start the PC and the SCSI drives will be seen as computer drives and by exploring you can see the project folders, if this works there is a bit of messing around but you go through the file names and see if there is some unusual file extensions in the name and then rename the files that is causing the problems.
If this does not work copy the tracks into the PC and later you can import the tracks wav files into a new project. By the way did you have any backups?
Songs sometimes disappears if you do a smart backup before the wav images have been written due to the software checking after copy only to find the image files have changed, for some reason the project disappears but usually only the backup?
Parse error have you carried out any of the following (sorry it’s long)
The MX-2424 & Backing Up:
On the subject of backups, Tascam offered a DVD-RAM unit, made originally by Hitachi as the 5.2Gig, GF-1050, and the 9.4Gig, GF-2050. The DVD-RAM, last used was provided by Panasonic, as 9.4Gig, LF-D291. These DVD-RAM’s use a 5.2Gig or 9.4Gig, Dual Sided “Type-1 or Type 4” DVD-RAM. The DVD-RAM should only be used as a long term archiving device, as it takes a substantial time to backup and reload to and from this device. Short-term storage should always be done on multiple hard drive units, as no formats need to be changed in moving projects between drives. This in turn means that transferring information between hard drives takes only a few seconds as opposed to the minutes it takes with the DVD-RAM.
Whenever transferring projects between hard drives, be sure to name the transferred project slightly different, as transferred information that is named exactly the same will only set up a reference header on the new drive and not transfer the project itself. This means that when you access this information on the new drive, it is referenced and played back from the old drive because the file information of the project, did not get copied to the new drive, just a reference header that refers the system back to the project on the old drive. This is because the MX-2424, while recording to only one drive at a time, reads from all hard drives connected to the system at once. In this way a given “Project” may span several drives.
An optional, if not better solution to data back up, is to backup to your computer through the Ethernet. This takes no longer than backing up to the DVD-RAM and has the added benefit that this backup can actually be exported as a “wav.” file. The MX-2424 writes all its files as “open .TL” files. These when backed up are seen as “.BU” files, (Back Up). Only the MX-2424, the SX-1, E-Magic’s Logic Audio or Steinberg’s Nuendo, support the opening of these “open .TL” files. Tascam offers no support of “open .TL” files in Logic or Nuendo.
What this means is that if an error occurs once these files have been transferred back to the hard drive, that these files will often be non-recoverable. These errors are generally known as “Parse Errors” or a “MacOpen (exists) Failure”, if the drive format was HFS+. By Exporting as a “wav.” file, that file can be opened on any system with a Digital Audio Program that supports, “wav.” files. This is almost every Digital Audio Program that exists. In other words, if files on your MX-2424 become corrupted, you have a way to recover your data by re-importing those files from the computer. If for any reason the files cannot be imported back into the MX-2424 via the Ethernet, then the file can be played back into the MX-2424 either digitally through the digital I/O or analog through analog I/O, depending on which I/O that you have. Here you can see how it might be helpful to have both the analog and digital I/O’s, and the necessity of choosing the right interface to go with your computer system and it’s sound card. The other added benefit to backing up to a computer is storing your backup to CD-R, CD-RW or DVD-R in your computer.
Extra to this, it appears from the description that the track file that contains information for the MX to place the tracks wav file is corrupted or missing, you can again check this out using the SCSI / PC method I have described above.
The drives you are using should be OK, I usually use 68 pin drives but what you have should not cause a problem. However I have had situations where some drive models just don’t perform as they should and with no explanation.
There are some users that have used SSD’s but it is not a simple convert and you need a SATA to SCSI interface that costs quite a bit.
Regarding the remote and noise, there was a problem with early production remotes where there was an earth loop causing problems, some people removed the earth connection on the remote to MX cable and the problem went, however it could also be the power supply for the remote, is it the original power supply?
Hope I covered some things here let me know how it goes.
Alan.
