RC-2424 Pulsing Noise w LED's

[bobadrew]

The remote for my MX makes a noise that pulses with rhythm of the blinking of the LED's. I saw a post at the old forum (I think) that said Tascam tied the LOGIC and ANALOG grounds together and that the solution is to lift the ground on the power supply of the RC. My power supply does not have a grounded plug, just a hot and neutral wire. How do I make this modification? Is it on the PCB inside the RC? There's some really great info on this board. Thanks.

-andrew

 

[witzendoz]

I remember that there was a problem with the remotes in the early days, one of the other studios in my town had problems where the remote would drop into record or something like that. I was a late buyer of a remote as I always used mx-view as the remote, the remote I eventually got came with a second machine I bought second hand. I don't have any problems with my remote however I use an after market power supply as the original one was fried.

Back to your problem, I think the fix in the early days for problems with remotes was to remove the earth wire in the multi pin cable not the power supply earth, if any one else remembers the solution please join in. I also can't remember if the earth removed was the shield or one or both of the earth pins within the plug. I have attached a schematic for the rear panel so you can work out which is which.

The reason some remotes don't have a problem could be due to Tascam doing a mod in the later ones??

Alan.

 

[bobadrew]

Thanks for the schematic Alan.

I have had issues at my job with sensors being grounded in the field causing problems. What we do with those is disconnect the ground at the field end and only keep it at the panel end. The shield wire is terminated at the panel. This sounds kind of like what you are talking about.

I'll look at my cable and see how easy it might be to disconnect the grounds on 4 & 6. If I can do that easily, I will try it and post the results.

I am also having the dreaded media too slow error but believe that it's caused by a bad drive. I'm getting another drive from a friend this weekend, hopefully, so I can test that theory.

 

[witzendoz]

I am also having the dreaded media too slow error but believe that it's caused by a bad drive. I'm getting another drive from a friend this weekend, hopefully, so I can test that theory.

My Standard reply to Media too slow problem:

Media too slow is caused by one of the following:
The drive is in need of a low level format, this is the usual problem.
The drive is about to die, this sometimes just happens if you are using old drives.
The drives are getting too hot.
The mx power supply is overloaded, on the way to failure, or the internal connections from the power supply are loose or faulty, how many drives are being run by the mx power supply?
The drive is not suitable for the mx.

Another thing to check is that you have the the latest operating version installed and that the machine has 256mb of ram, you can get this information from the menu.
I have bought many drives over the years and some of the drives just refuse to work properly with the mx, others work really well, there seems to be no reason sometimes.

I also always recommend that you mount the drives in an external SCSI tower to reduce heat in the MX and to reduce power loading on the MX power supply. I have no internal drives in my MX.
Cheers
Alan.

 

[bobadrew]

I've seen some of your other posts about the SCSI tower. I'd like to do that at some point. Can I do the low level format if there's data on the disk? Isn't the llf like a defrag?

 

[witzendoz]

A low level format completely deletes everything on the drive. You have to back up the projects you want to keep before doing the low level format. If you don't have a second scsi drive to back up to you can do a backup over the ethernet to a computer which works but is very slow. MX-view makes this easier.

After a low level format you then initialise the drive, these days usually to fat32. Read page 47 of the tutorial, don't read the operation manual it is just confusing LOL, the tutorial is much better.

Alan.

 

[bobadrew]

I got you on the LLF. I use my machine more like an old tape machine and am not too familiar with MX-View. Will MX-View work with Windows 8? If not, what's the latest OS that will run it? That's something I need to learn a bit more about.

Regarding the SCSI tower, is that just an old PC box that you use the power supply to power the SCSI drives and connect the SCSI bus to the external port of the MX? I believe I saw a post where you said that there has to be a termination connector in the last SCSI "port" on the bus cable, correct?

 

[witzendoz]

I know there are some here running mx view on windows 7 so it should run on 8, have a look through the threads about how to get it working, if you have no luck let me know.

My tower is a bit more involved, I have rack out bays for scsi drives and a load of extra drives in bays so that I basically use 1 drive for each band project I am working on and a couple of back up drives with all the projects on. However my first tower was a computer tower with the power supply moded to come on with the switch on the back so that there was no mother board required to activate the power supply. I had the drives sitting in the drive racks inside and an internal scsi cable connecting them all. I had external cable poked through the back of the tower with it connecting to the internal cable. The end of the cable has to have an active terminator for the scsi chain to operate correctly.

All these bits and pieces are available on ebay very cheap as scsi is old style technology now, don't pay stupid prices that some ask for. There is a document on the Tascam support site showing scsi chain hook up.

Cheers
Alan

 

[bobadrew]

Many thanks for all of your help.

-andrew

 

[bobadrew]

One other quick question. I have looked back through several posts about SCSI hard drives but am not sure I have the pertinent info. I'm OK as to sizes to buy and I know that the design was for Ultra2 SCSI which is also notated LVD. Does the U160 / U320 designation refer to the drive frame that the drive sit in? I have seen some U320 drives for sale but want to make sure that they will work with my machine.

 

[Darren]

Will MX-View work with Windows 8? If not, what's the latest OS that will run it?

You can't install it on Windows 7 64bit so I assume you can't install it on Windows 8, not sure if it will install on Win7 32 bit.
However, you can use it on Windows 7 64, so it might also work with Windows 8.
I know that sounds strange, you can't install it but you can use it and it works well on Windows 7 64.
You have to install it on Windows XP 32, then go to program files, copy the entire Tascam MX View folder to a thumb drive or ext drive, then copy the Tascam MX View folder to program files 86 in Windows 7 (try this with Win8), then you can create a desktop shortcut from the application execute in the Tascam folder or just run the app from there.
If you want a copy of the Tascam MX View folder let me know and I will upload it for you.
If you try this I would like to know if it works with Windows 8, cheers.
P.S. I use both u160 and u320 68pin drives and they work fine, the u320's are backwards compatible to u160.

 

[bobadrew]

Darren,

Thanks for the info. timmdrumm sent me the "installed" version of the files yesterday and I put in in the x86 folder. It opens up and I can see all of the menu options so I am assuming that it will work fine. My machine is down at the moment but I am going to try to put it back together and test to see if the software can communicate with the MX.

I saw that the U360 is supposed to be backwards compatible but didn't know if it would actually work. Thanks for letting me know.

-andrew

 

[bobadrew]

I am able to communicate with my Windows 8 machine to the MX. I am able to arm tracks, see a list of the projects on the hard drive, etc. I'm reading through the manual so it's slow going for me at this point but I don't see any reason it's not going to work. I just wanted to share.

 

[bobadrew]

For some reason I don't have access to the Settings commands in the Network window. The commands are there (not greyed out) but don't do anything when I click on them. I unmounted a drive from the front panel and I got a notice on the computer that the action was complete but I was not able to mount/unmount from the computer. Is there some setting that allows this? My IP's are both 192.168.1.___ with the proper subnet.

Any ideas?

 

[witzendoz]

The IP addresses should be different between the MX and the computer, the last number should be different, can be any number. IE the last number on the MX is .001 then the computer should be say .002 (some later versions of windows correct this to just a 2 without the zeros).

If the settings commands are still greyed out, it could be that either the MX-view version or the Operating system version is not the latest version?

Back to the question on U160 & U320 drives, as Darren said they are backward compatible. However you need to have the latest operating system installed to see the full capacity of the larger 36g & 74g drives.

On occasions I do get a drive that refuses to work, but I think this has more to do with the way it was originally formatted, maybe a partition? I am working on that problem in the little spare time I have available along with the SATA drive to SCSI drive adaption (but thats another story).

Alan.

 

[bobadrew]

I've been reading about the SCSI to SATA drive conversion and may do that in the future as well. In the meantime, I've found a 16G SCSI drive in town that I have LLF'd and initialized. I'm going to try to write to it and see how it responds.

The issue with the settings commands is that nothing happens when I click on the commands. They are NOT grayed out but behave as if they are. My laptop and machine have different IPs but are on the same subnet so that should be square. I was just wondering if there was setup or config info I was missing or files that I don't have.

Still working the issue of my remote noise too. I emailed TASCAM tech support to see if they know anything about the grounding situation. It seems like a simple enough fix but I'm not sure how to accomplish it. More to follow.

-andrew

 

[witzendoz]

Oh, The network window. Hardly ever use it, I only go there if I am using a different MX. What are you trying to do in the network window exactly?

Alan.

 

[bobadrew]

I'm just trying to access the system parameters from there instead of using the keypad on the front of the unit. It's not a critical need, just curious why the other functions would work but not those.

-andrew

 

[witzendoz]

I had a look and can see why I don't bother using the network window, I will try it out when I am next in the studio as the laptop I was looking at was not connected to an MX at the time, however these are more for indication than for setting perimeters:

Name is the machine name and only informs you as to which machine(s) are there, I think this has to be set on the front panel.

IP Address again has to be set before it networks from the front panel.

Project name is the name of the project that is presently loaded.

Sample rate & Frame rate are the current sample & frame rate selected.

Online tells you the machine is online.

Bus ID & Bus status is used when syncing 2 machines using the selected ID of each MX.

Name and IP address are set and forget parameters anyway so once done you properly won't change them again. I think the IP address cannot be changed while networked anyway or it will drop off line.

If you want to start a new project, a new project name is entered when you click on "new Project" under file at the top of the mx view page. You can also set sample rate and tape mode/non-destructive mode at this point.

There is a single "On Line" button on the front panel so it is not a front panel menu item.

Hope this helped.

Cheers
Alan.

 

[sys700]

Andrew....did you ever resolve this? I had the same issue, and removed the ground pins 4 and 6 inside the remote by removing the DB9 connector and clipping those pins, but I was still having some pulsing RFI issues on certain delay units. How I finally resolved the issue was removing the ground pin on the power supply cord to the remote. No more pulsing noise.