Sx1 start up problem

[Elvictor]

Hi guys, first post here. My Sx1 has recently started to act up. First it started to hang up while playing tracks. All playback would stop and the transport led for stop would flash. I could still us the mouse and shift though menus on vga and LCD. All this would happen during its first start up during that day. All issues would go away after restart. I ran diagnostic disk and noticed battery voltage was below spec so I replaced that but I'm still having issues. Everything boots up fine but it will hang up during the mounting complete upon it's first startup during the day. I've let it sit a few minutes and screens displayed ERROR. STARTING SEQUENCER. After a hard restart everything works.

Sorry for the long post.

I'm stumped. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[sxuser]

I wish I had some suggestions for you, but I don't really -- other than just leaving your machine running 24/7. I have very similar issues, which always happen shortly after first startup. After rebooting it's always fine, so I just leave it on all the time now. Perhaps not a great idea, but I leave my computer running all the time, and the SX-1 is (in part) a computer, so...

 

[Rodrigo]

I would open the machine and disconnect every board, clean it with air blower and re-connect everything again. Check out the rams

 

[Elvictor]

I've thought about doing that I just don't see how it would pass all startup checks if a board was not seated properly. I will try it though.

 

[btrecords]

I have almost the same problem, but a mi appears to me after "mounting hard disc recorder" appears an Error that says something like: thread id 15

 

[Elvictor]

I haven't had the same issue you describe. Mine either boots completely and stalls on playback or will boot through and hang at starting sequencer. I did notice it was slow loading audio takes. I also noticed that the ram plays a big part in loading. I tried some new ram and that caused more issue so I believe the ram I have is not compatable. I have another set of ram coming in so I'll update when I install it.

 

[Elvictor]

Thanks for the info. I was wondering about bad capacitors. They all appear fine, no buldges no leakage.

The mother board in my unit is a GA-71xe4. Does anyone know if a GA-71xe will work?

As of now, everything boots up and loads. I do a hard power down and restart and have been able to record and play with out issues.

 

[Elvictor]

Thanks for the info. My plan was to get a spare motherboard and change that caps on that one and swap it in.

I do have a multimeter and I will check the voltages once I have time I'll post back what I find.

 

[Elvictor]

Ok, so I finally got around to troubleshooting some more. Got some ram that apparently is not compatible. Started taking out the cards and noticed swollen capacitors on motherboard. I've taken the motherboard out and I will be swapping out the capacitors. Switching power supply capacitors look good and power supply voltages are in spec.

I'll post again with results when I get it back together.

 

[Dice]

I'm assuming that you guys have first reloaded the OS. Also might help to plug the HD into a tower as a slave, right click the volume and check for and repair any errors. Corrupt files/file headers have sometimes stopped my SX-1s in their tracks.

 

[Elvictor]

Hi Dice, yeah I’ve checked HD for errors. I installed motherboard with all new capacitors. SX1 is booting nicely, but still locking up on playback. I have noticed the b2 led status light blinking on the dsp card but I don’t think that’s locking up transport. Everything is checking out fine with the diagnostic test on disk and volatages are all in spec. Any ideas. This machine has worked for me since 2006 no issues until life and kids got in the way and it sat unused.

 

[Dice]

Is the RAM good now?

 

[Elvictor]

Still using the old ram. I have not been able to find a compatable replacement. It’s showing 512 mb total and 148 mb available in the settings tab on an empty project.

 

[Elvictor]

Got it to play for about 30sec then it stopped and gave a waveform loading error 29,30,31.

 

[Dice]

Yeah, B2 normally blinks, indicating activity. I've attached a guide to the internal cards that Jackson at Tascam provided to us.

 

[Dice]

Have you tried removing just one RAM card, booting up, and then swapping and trying the other? How full is the hard drive? Can you switch projects and if so, does it act the same way on other projects? Beyond that, try a new project and see if it acts the same way with it.

I just reread the thread and am not certain that you reinstalled the OS (without erasing the HD). Have we done that?

 

[Elvictor]

Yes, I’ve tried swapping ram in and out trying different slots etc. I have also reinstalled just the OS. I’m still thinking I either have two faulty rams or my power supply has issues like noise or something. I’m going to try to recap that and see.

 

[Elvictor]

Put some new ram in today. SX1 loads fine still crashes during playback. Ram is showing up as 148mb available under the secondary settings on the lcd screen. Is that normal? Crash is random. Tested voltages again. All are in normal range. Voltages in bios screen fluctuate. 12 volt drops to 11.970. Everything else stays in range.

 

[Elvictor]

After having power supply and motherboard recapped and new ram I fired up the Sx1. Still had a couple hang ups during the first boot and audio would play and freeze randomly locking up system. Weird thing was I could still audition audio clips via clip browser. I left machine powerd on all night and did a reboot this morning and wouldn’t you know it, it played and loaded song files like a champ. I am out of ideas other than there may still be some bad capacitors somewhere. Anybody have any thoughts?

 

[Elvictor]

And it froze again.