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#1
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Opening RNC?
Hi Y'all,
I'm on the road and having trouble with my Smartdisk Firelite 80 Gig external firewire hard drive. It had worked perfectly for a year until all of a sudden it didn't. It's crashed twice and is probably fried. (It disappears from my Powerbook's desktop and is no longer recognized by the computer, apparently a b-tree problem). The first time I reformated it all the way down to the zeroes, but within a couple days it did it again, both times losing some valuable info. So I'm currently recording to my Powerbook G4's internal drive, which seems to be working fine and will suffice until I get home in 3 weeks. But here's my question; both times when the Firelite crashed I had my fairly new RNC compressor plugged into my Mbox's inserts via a single TRS cable. Before leaving home I had opened up the RNC just to take a peak at what's inside. I didn't mess with anything, just looked in and reassembled it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep thinking that I've read here that one wasn't supposed to open those RNCs up because it could damage them somehow. Am I just imagining this or could the RNC actually be damaged and sending out bad vibes and frying my other gear? Probably not, but I figured I might as well ask. I've been hesitant to use it again, which is hopefully just superstitious foolishness. Thanks in advance for your insights and expertise. Aloha, Rick. |
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#2
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rickymix wrote:
I'm on the road and having trouble with my Smartdisk Firelite 80 Gig external firewire hard drive. It had worked perfectly for a year until all of a sudden it didn't. It's crashed twice and is probably fried. (It disappears from my Powerbook's desktop and is no longer recognized by the computer, apparently a b-tree problem). The first time I reformated it all the way down to the zeroes, but within a couple days it did it again, both times losing some valuable info. So I'm currently recording to my Powerbook G4's internal drive, which seems to be working fine and will suffice until I get home in 3 weeks. Disk drives fail. If you're running OSX, you have a bunch of tools like fsck that help you figure out how it failed and why, but hard drives fail. But here's my question; both times when the Firelite crashed I had my fairly new RNC compressor plugged into my Mbox's inserts via a single TRS cable. Before leaving home I had opened up the RNC just to take a peak at what's inside. I didn't mess with anything, just looked in and reassembled it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep thinking that I've read here that one wasn't supposed to open those RNCs up because it could damage them somehow. Am I just imagining this or could the RNC actually be damaged and sending out bad vibes and frying my other gear? Probably not, but I figured I might as well ask. I've been hesitant to use it again, which is hopefully just superstitious foolishness. No. Take things apart. If they didn't want you to take it apart, they woudn't have put screws in the case, they would have glued it. It's important to take things apart. Don't let anyone tell you that anything is a sealed box and you shouldn't ever look inside. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
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#3
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No. Take things apart. If they didn't want you to take it apart, they woudn't have put screws in the case, they would have glued it. It's important to take things apart. Don't let anyone tell you that anything is a sealed box and you shouldn't ever look inside. --scott Or they'd put one of those "warranty void if" stickers on it. Jonny Durango |
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#4
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"rickymix" wrote ...
I'm on the road and having trouble with my Smartdisk Firelite 80 Gig external firewire hard drive. It had worked perfectly for a year until all of a sudden it didn't. It's crashed twice and is probably fried. (It disappears from my Powerbook's desktop and is no longer recognized by the computer, apparently a b-tree problem). The first time I reformated it all the way down to the zeroes, but within a couple days it did it again, both times losing some valuable info. So I'm currently recording to my Powerbook G4's internal drive, which seems to be working fine and will suffice until I get home in 3 weeks. But here's my question; both times when the Firelite crashed I had my fairly new RNC compressor plugged into my Mbox's inserts via a single TRS cable. Before leaving home I had opened up the RNC just to take a peak at what's inside. I didn't mess with anything, just looked in and reassembled it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep thinking that I've read here that one wasn't supposed to open those RNCs up because it could damage them somehow. Am I just imagining this or could the RNC actually be damaged and sending out bad vibes and frying my other gear? Probably not, but I figured I might as well ask. I've been hesitant to use it again, which is hopefully just superstitious foolishness. I agree, superstion and foolishness. :-) The RNC mechanical assembly is rather straightforward and unless you physically damaged something, disassembly is unlikely to cause it any harm. In the unlikely event of actually damaging the RNC (or in case of a water landing :-) it is highly unlikely it would have anything to do with the hard drives (internal or external). What a euphemism: "water landing"! |
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#5
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"Richard Crowley" wrote in message ... "rickymix" wrote ... But here's my question; both times when the Firelite crashed I had my fairly new RNC compressor plugged into my Mbox's inserts via a single TRS cable. Before leaving home I had opened up the RNC just to take a peak at what's inside. I didn't mess with anything, just looked in and reassembled it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep thinking that I've read here that one wasn't supposed to open those RNCs up because it could damage them somehow. Am I just imagining this or could the RNC actually be damaged and sending out bad vibes and frying my other gear? Probably not, but I figured I might as well ask. I've been hesitant to use it again, which is hopefully just superstitious foolishness. In the unlikely event of actually damaging the RNC (or in case of a water landing :-) it is highly unlikely it would have anything to do with the hard drives (internal or external). What a euphemism: "water landing"! Nice one... but, how else could you screw one up? assuming power applied. |
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#6
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"David Morgan (MAMS)" wrote ...
Nice one... but, how else could you screw one up? assuming power applied. There are a dozen ways you could screw up an RNC if you really wanted to, power applied or not. Assuming "rickymix" was not intending to do that, however. But I can't think of ANY thing you can do to an RNC that would have ANY effect, positive or negative, on a hard drive attached to a computer at the end of the chain. |
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#7
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In article ,
Jonny Durango wrote: No. Take things apart. If they didn't want you to take it apart, they woudn't have put screws in the case, they would have glued it. It's important to take things apart. Don't let anyone tell you that anything is a sealed box and you shouldn't ever look inside. Or they'd put one of those "warranty void if" stickers on it. Those stickers are how you know that it's possible to take it apart. If folks didn't do it, they wouldn't have bothered putting a sticker on. Go head, invalidate the warranty. --scott NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE, indeed. -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
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#8
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On 21 Apr 2005 10:22:30 -0400, Scott Dorsey wrote:
In article , Jonny Durango wrote: No. Take things apart. If they didn't want you to take it apart, they woudn't have put screws in the case, they would have glued it. It's important to take things apart. Don't let anyone tell you that anything is a sealed box and you shouldn't ever look inside. Or they'd put one of those "warranty void if" stickers on it. Those stickers are how you know that it's possible to take it apart. If folks didn't do it, they wouldn't have bothered putting a sticker on. Go head, invalidate the warranty. --scott It's trivially easy to open "warrenty sealed" enclosures and reseal them such that a service facility won't notice the breech. If your manual dexterity isn't up to the task, I recommend NOT opening the case. How is left as an excercise for someone who has the tools to splice magnetic tape. |
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#9
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rickymix wrote:
Hi Y'all, I'm on the road and having trouble with my Smartdisk Firelite 80 Gig external firewire hard drive. It had worked perfectly for a year until all of a sudden it didn't. It's crashed twice and is probably fried. (It disappears from my Powerbook's desktop and is no longer recognized by the computer, apparently a b-tree problem). The first time I reformated it all the way down to the zeroes, but within a couple days it did it again, both times losing some valuable info. So I'm currently recording to my Powerbook G4's internal drive, which seems to be working fine and will suffice until I get home in 3 weeks. But here's my question; both times when the Firelite crashed I had my fairly new RNC compressor plugged into my Mbox's inserts via a single TRS cable. Before leaving home I had opened up the RNC just to take a peak at what's inside. I didn't mess with anything, just looked in and reassembled it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep thinking that I've read here that one wasn't supposed to open those RNCs up because it could damage them somehow. Am I just imagining this or could the RNC actually be damaged and sending out bad vibes and frying my other gear? Probably not, but I figured I might as well ask. I've been hesitant to use it again, which is hopefully just superstitious foolishness. Thanks in advance for your insights and expertise. Aloha, Rick. Hi Rick/All, this is my first post on r.a.p. I thought I would chime in, as I have had a similar experience. It is possible that there is nothing wrong with your drive. I have a LaCie firewire drive attached to my G4 tower that one day just disappeared from the desktop, I assumed it had died. I tried putting it on my ibook just in case it wasn't the drive, sure enough, it showed up on the desktop and was working perfectly well. I got the drive back up and running on my tower by resetting the motherboard of the G4. Actually, the first time I tried the reset procedure, the computer would not turn on at all, which freaked me out a bit but I repeated the procedure and it came back to life along with the firewire drive (and all its files). After a bit more investigating, I discovered that there was some sort of "issue" with the OS X Jaguar and the firewire bus and that the firmware of the hard drive needed to be updated, which I did as per the instructions on the LaCie webpage. Not sure if this is the problem with your drive but it might be worth looking into. Good Luck, Paul |
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#10
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Hi Paul et all, Thanks for the advice. And welcome to r.a.p., Paul! It's a great source of info from recording techniques to Bar-B-Que technique! I'll further investigate my dead Firelite drive when I get back home. The first time it crashed I took it to an Apple "Genius Bar" and it turned out to be a b-tree fault. I reformatted it to the zeroes, but a week later it crashed again. It was making odd whining noises too. I fear it's fried. (Fear of frying?) Cheers, Rick. |
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#11
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"Richard Crowley" wrote:
"David Morgan (MAMS)" wrote ... Nice one... but, how else could you screw one up? assuming power applied. There are a dozen ways you could screw up an RNC if you really wanted to, power applied or not. Assuming "rickymix" was not intending to do that, however. But I can't think of ANY thing you can do to an RNC that would have ANY effect, positive or negative, on a hard drive attached to a computer at the end of the chain. Here's one way I tried to screw up an RNC; it kept working: http://www.mojopie.com/indexharvey.jpg Harvey Gerst Indian Trail Recording Studio http://www.ITRstudio.com/ |
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#12
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That's a great photo, Harvey! Why can't all equipment be like that;
small & light yet strong and great sounding. And cheap! A couple months ago I was talking to Mark at FMR about making an RNC/USB. Mark says USB would easily supply enough juice to power an RNC, and that he's been thinking about doing something like that, if he ever has time. I won't hold my breath though. Via USB you could set the controls within the computer, which would be cheaper and make the box even more robust. Plus you could save tons of presets. It would work, as does the current RNC, via the analog inserts of an mBox, or similar interface. This would leave room inside the RNC/USB box for some other useful analog front end stuff like a simple EQ and a Distortion Plus type fuzz box. That would be much cooler to have on the road, and better sounding, than all those digital modeling type plug-ins, although those are also great for what they are. Aloha from Hawaii, Rick. |
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#13
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#14
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Harvey Gerst wrote:
"Richard Crowley" wrote: "David Morgan (MAMS)" wrote ... Nice one... but, how else could you screw one up? assuming power applied. There are a dozen ways you could screw up an RNC if you really wanted to, power applied or not. Assuming "rickymix" was not intending to do that, however. But I can't think of ANY thing you can do to an RNC that would have ANY effect, positive or negative, on a hard drive attached to a computer at the end of the chain. Here's one way I tried to screw up an RNC; it kept working: http://www.mojopie.com/indexharvey.jpg Aw shucks, the 4 lug nuts says that it wasn't a very heavy car. ;-) |
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#15
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Mike wrote:
were you thinking of a box with external (analog) I/O, powered by the USB port, and with a computer application replacing the knobs? Oh, yeah, I see you were. ..... It would certainly be handy for those who compress by eye "to get a good level and avoid overloading." But you're not one of THOSE are you? g Hi Mike, Yep, I is THEY! :) Even back in the 2" days I always liked to track vocals with a few dbs of soft compression taming the dynamics a bit, rounding down the peaks. For heavy "sound effect" type compression, I agree with you that it's best not to do that in tracking. Generally I like to try to get as good a sound as possible analog before going into the computer. Digital compression, EQ, modeling, etc is quite usable, IMO, if you start out with a good analog sound. Personally, on the road I'm mostly concerned with Vocals, and Electric and Acoustic Guitars. So I'd love an analog front end consisting of an RNC, maybe a low freq roll-off, a Fuzz Box, and maybe a SansAmp type analog guitar amp simulator, all powered by USB and controlled on a computer screen, to be applied via the analog inserts of my MBox. An RNC/USB! Is there a market for something like this or am I the only person who would buy one? Mark McQ says it wouldn't be too hard to build one if there was a demand. Anyone else? Aloha, Rick. P.S. Also, with an RNC/USB you could tweak in sounds that you liked while at home and then save them as presets to be recalled later on the road. That would sure be handy. R.N. |
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#16
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"Arny Krueger" wrote:
Harvey Gerst wrote: "Richard Crowley" wrote: "David Morgan (MAMS)" wrote ... Nice one... but, how else could you screw one up? assuming power applied. There are a dozen ways you could screw up an RNC if you really wanted to, power applied or not. Assuming "rickymix" was not intending to do that, however. But I can't think of ANY thing you can do to an RNC that would have ANY effect, positive or negative, on a hard drive attached to a computer at the end of the chain. Here's one way I tried to screw up an RNC; it kept working: http://www.mojopie.com/indexharvey.jpg Aw shucks, the 4 lug nuts says that it wasn't a very heavy car. ;-) Well, it started out to be a double blind ABX test, but when I pulled up in the White Freightliner for the second half of the test, most of the people felt there were enough clues to prevent a fair double blind test, so we stopped with just the Toyota. Harvey Gerst Indian Trail Recording Studio http://www.ITRstudio.com/ |
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#17
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"rickymix" wrote in message
oups.com... [...] So I'd love an analog front end consisting of an RNC, maybe a low freq roll-off, a Fuzz Box, and maybe a SansAmp type analog guitar amp simulator, all powered by USB and controlled on a computer screen, to be applied via the analog inserts of my MBox. An RNC/USB! Is there a market for something like this or am I the only person who would buy one? Mark McQ says it wouldn't be too hard to build one if there was a demand. Anyone else? If you dump all that fuzz/amp crap, I'm in. First, I don't play guitar. Second, I hate combo boxes. I prefer to choose the preamp I want with the EQ I want with the compressor I want. Combos always seem to have at least one and often several weak links. Let's stick to one function per device. Third, I don't see a logical relationship between an effects unit and a compressor that would suggest they should live in the same box in the first place. Fourth, it would require adding more stuff to the RNC which makes it even less likely it will ever make it to market! If we're talking about an RNC in its present form except with a USB cable instead of knobs, I'll take two, -- "It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!" - Lorin David Schultz in the control room making even bad news sound good (Remove spamblock to reply) |
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#18
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rickymix wrote:
So I'd love an analog front end consisting of an RNC, maybe a low freq roll-off, a Fuzz Box, and maybe a SansAmp type analog guitar amp simulator, all powered by USB USB gots juice enough for that? -- ha |
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#19
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"hank alrich" wrote ... rickymix wrote: So I'd love an analog front end consisting of an RNC, maybe a low freq roll-off, a Fuzz Box, and maybe a SansAmp type analog guitar amp simulator, all powered by USB USB gots juice enough for that? 5V @ 500mA = 2.5W |
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#20
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"Lorin David Schultz" wrote ...
If we're talking about an RNC in its present form except with a USB cable instead of knobs, I'll take two, Put me on the list also. |
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#21
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Hankster wrote:
USB gots juice enough for that? Hi y'all, Mark claims USB would provide plenty of power. Lorin, for my home studio I also prefer having separate units rather than "combo boxes". But on the road I hate having to carry all the various boxes, power warts, power strip, connecting cables, etc. Realistically, if Mark ever does make an RNC/USB it will most likely be exactly as you describe; a normal RNC powered and controlled by USB. I'd love that too! But I think that there are enough traveling guitarists on the road to warrant an RNC/USB/GTR model as well, especially since it would hardly need any more hardware, since it would all be controlled from the computer screen. Have you ever looked inside a Distortion Plus? It's nothing but a tiny card with a few little diodes and such on it. It would cost nothing and easily fit inside an RNC box. And it sounds way better than any amp modeling digital stuff. Cheers, Rick. |
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#22
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#23
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"Mike Rivers" wrote ...
rcrowley writes: 5V @ 500mA = 2.5W I think that's a spec, but I'm not sure whose spec, FAQ: http://www.usb.org/developers/usbfaq/#pow1 SPEC: http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/usb_20_02212005.zip nor am I convinced that every USB port follows that. I was testing the TASCAM US-122 audio interface and found that switching on the phantom power casused the USB connection to my laptop (but not my old workhorse Dell desktop) computer to break. I measured the current and discovered that when flipping the phantom power switch, it drew about 2.5A for a few milliseconds, probalby while a DC-DC converter was getting up to speed. That was apparently more load than the laptop port could handle. According to the spec, the USB port supplies only 100mA until the device negotiates for more power. "Intelligent power management" for battery-operated systems, etc. |
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#24
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