OK, you can take your minds out of the gutter, or your noses off the
table. I'm talking about Coca Cola, spilled into my hard drive.

This actually occurred about three months ago. At the time, my MOTU
outboard gear was in storage (I was between moves). But my soundcard
was in there.

Following standard procedure for these sorts of incidents, I
meticulously cleaned out the hard drive, along with its various cards,
with a toothbrush and clean water. The PC returned to working
condition, with no discernable problems since.

But I just got moved into my new place, and just set up the rest of my
stuff, and I swear I'm hearing degraded audio. Now, I'm willing to
chalk it up to an overactive imagination. I'm also willing to chalk it
up to perhaps not yet having properly set all the options for my
monitors, playback software, etc. Either way, it just doesn't seem to
SOUND like it used to sound.

So, tell me: I know we're dealing with the digital domain here. And
isn't it a basic truism that a digital device either works or doesn't
work? As in, there's no in-between? As in, if my MOTU soundcard were
actually damaged by the Coke spill, it would simply not function at
all?

Now, I know mechanical gear can result in degraded sound. Speakers can
quit vibrating correctly, bad circuits can add noise, etc. But can a
simple digital device -- like my soundcard -- actually go "halfway"
bad?

I'm hoping the answer is, "No, if the soundcard were affected by the
Coke,you wouldn't have sound problems, you just wouldn't have sound at
all." But please give me the hard truth either way.

FYI: I've got the 2408 outboard interface, with the standard PCI-324
card.

Thanks. I'm sure most of you can understand my neurotic worrying about
this.

Chris

It could in fact be the MOTU. There is a bunch of stuff in that break
out box that could, well,, break. I would think there is an active
audio circuit or ten in there. along with other stuff related to the
converters. so I would not rule out the box..

You didn't really describe the problem with any detail and you seem to
be wondering your self if it might be in your head. Changing rooms can
play a lot of tricks on you. Listen to a bunch of files you know well
through the head phones and see if it's different. Make sure you listen
through all the analog out's offered to make sure they all sound the
same.

what do you think you hear,
is it something you can check with tones and an o-scope?

Mark

Thanks for responding. You're right -- I was perhaps a little vague in
my description of what happened.

The break-out box was safely tucked away in storage at the time. It
was only my hard drive -- with the PCI card inside -- that got Coke
spilled into it.

So the box was untouched. It was the card that got some soda on it.
Which I cleaned with water, as instructed elsewhere.

I'm just wondering: Can a "damaged" sound card create the same sort of
degradation issues that you get with overblown monitors, faulty mixer
outputs, or other MECHANICAL problems? Again, I've always been under
the impression that any device that deals with simple binary 1's and
0's either reads the 1's and 0's, or it doesn't. In other words,
you're not gonna get "fuzzy" audio from a previously fine soundcard.

My impression, of course, could be completely offbase. Which is why
I'm asking the experts here.

So to clarify again: The outboard unit didn't take the Coke hit. Only
the soundcard did.

Chris


On 31 Mar 2005 18:08:06 -0800, "ivis" wrote:

It could in fact be the MOTU. There is a bunch of stuff in that break
out box that could, well,, break. I would think there is an active
audio circuit or ten in there. along with other stuff related to the
converters. so I would not rule out the box..

You didn't really describe the problem with any detail and you seem to
be wondering your self if it might be in your head. Changing rooms can
play a lot of tricks on you. Listen to a bunch of files you know well
through the head phones and see if it's different. Make sure you listen
through all the analog out's offered to make sure they all sound the
same.

Christopher M wrote:
So, tell me: I know we're dealing with the digital domain here. And
isn't it a basic truism that a digital device either works or doesn't
work? As in, there's no in-between?

Yes, except that when it doesn't work, that doesn't necessarily
mean that it fails catastrophically in a way that you notice.

For instance, a long time ago, I had a particular model Amiga
computer that had issues with DMA transfers over a certain size.
Everything would *appear* to work just fine, but when large
transfers (over like 64K, I think) were done, something would
go wrong with the clock, and a stream of data like this:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

would get transformed into something like this:

The quick brwn fox jumps over the laz#y dog.

That is, somewhere along the line, a byte was lost, all the
following bytes for a time were moved over by one, and
a random (yes, totally random!) byte was inserted at some
position to make up the difference. As you can imagine, this
was unpleasant when DMA was being used to write to the hard
drive.

This was a design or manufacturing flaw rather than a failure
that happened in the field. But the point remains that sometimes
digital gear can be off without totally not working.

On the other hand, it IS quite rare for that happen...

- Logan

Christopher M wrote:

The break-out box was safely tucked away in storage at the time. It
was only my hard drive -- with the PCI card inside -- that got Coke
spilled into it.

You have a hard drive with a PCI card inside it? Amazing! I think you mean
your Motherboard right? And you spilled your Coca Cola on the PCI card? And
after doing so you cleaned the PCI card up? Did you clean up all of the PCI
slots as well? You could very well have some sticky residue sitting on the
PCI buses, which maybe causing some sort of problem.


I'm just wondering: Can a "damaged" sound card create the same sort of
degradation issues that you get with overblown monitors, faulty mixer
outputs, or other MECHANICAL problems?

The Cards got electrical pieces on it, caps, resistors and that sort of
thing...why couldn't it degrade if one or 10 of them were wrecked a little
bit? If you aren't getting proper resistance on the signal paths, things
could sound different. You should take your card to another computer and
check it out.

PapaNate

Christopher M wrote:

The break-out box was safely tucked away in storage at the time. It
was only my hard drive -- with the PCI card inside -- that got Coke
spilled into it.

You have a hard drive with a PCI card inside it? Amazing! I think you mean
your Motherboard right? And you spilled your Coca Cola on the PCI card? And
after doing so you cleaned the PCI card up? Did you clean up all of the PCI
slots as well? You could very well have some sticky residue sitting on the
PCI buses, which maybe causing some sort of problem.


I'm just wondering: Can a "damaged" sound card create the same sort of
degradation issues that you get with overblown monitors, faulty mixer
outputs, or other MECHANICAL problems?

The Cards got electrical pieces on it, caps, resistors and that sort of
thing...why couldn't it degrade if one or 10 of them were wrecked a little
bit? If you aren't getting proper resistance on the signal paths, things
could sound different. You should take your card to another computer and
check it out.

PapaNate

Yeah, yeah... the motherboard! Sorry, I'm a bit frazzled at the
moment. Moving time is bad enough -- top it off with this kind of mess
and it's that much worse.

Thanks for the info.


On Fri, 01 Apr 2005 02:44:42 GMT, PapaNate
wrote:



Christopher M wrote:

The break-out box was safely tucked away in storage at the time. It
was only my hard drive -- with the PCI card inside -- that got Coke
spilled into it.

You have a hard drive with a PCI card inside it? Amazing! I think you mean
your Motherboard right? And you spilled your Coca Cola on the PCI card? And
after doing so you cleaned the PCI card up? Did you clean up all of the PCI
slots as well? You could very well have some sticky residue sitting on the
PCI buses, which maybe causing some sort of problem.


I'm just wondering: Can a "damaged" sound card create the same sort of
degradation issues that you get with overblown monitors, faulty mixer
outputs, or other MECHANICAL problems?

The Cards got electrical pieces on it, caps, resistors and that sort of
thing...why couldn't it degrade if one or 10 of them were wrecked a little
bit? If you aren't getting proper resistance on the signal paths, things
could sound different. You should take your card to another computer and
check it out.

PapaNate

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 21:52:11 -0500, Christopher M wrote:

Yeah, yeah... the motherboard! Sorry, I'm a bit frazzled at the
moment. Moving time is bad enough -- top it off with this kind of mess
and it's that much worse.

The bad news is that CocaCola is acidic and corrosive. The good
news is that you can wash it off with plain water.

How long ago was the incident (if you know)? Doesn't really
matter. Wash the offended party in tap water, for starters,
blot dry, then hair-dryer dry (light heat), then knock wood.

Or not. Can you actually see Coke residue?

Good fortune,

Chris Hornbeck
6x9=42

"PapaNate" wrote in message
...


Christopher M wrote:

The break-out box was safely tucked away in storage at the time. It
was only my hard drive -- with the PCI card inside -- that got Coke
spilled into it.

You have a hard drive with a PCI card inside it? Amazing! I think you
mean
your Motherboard right? And you spilled your Coca Cola on the PCI card?
And
after doing so you cleaned the PCI card up? Did you clean up all of the
PCI
slots as well? You could very well have some sticky residue sitting on
the
PCI buses, which maybe causing some sort of problem.


I'm just wondering: Can a "damaged" sound card create the same sort of
degradation issues that you get with overblown monitors, faulty mixer
outputs, or other MECHANICAL problems?

The Cards got electrical pieces on it, caps, resistors and that sort of
thing...why couldn't it degrade if one or 10 of them were wrecked a little
bit? If you aren't getting proper resistance on the signal paths, things
could sound different. You should take your card to another computer and
check it out.

The MOTU324 card is digital only, it uses a firewire cable to interface to
the converter box.

That said, there's a lot of traffic on that cable using MOTU's propriatary
format, and I have had problems with dropouts depending on the quality and
length of cable used. I would assume that any Coke in the jacks would cause
the same kind of problem, which would produce an audible degradation in the
audio. It's not that much to replace the card though, maybe $100 on Ebay.

Sean

Sean Conolly wrote:
That said, there's a lot of traffic on that cable using MOTU's propriatary
format, and I have had problems with dropouts depending on the quality and
length of cable used. I would assume that any Coke in the jacks would cause
the same kind of problem, which would produce an audible degradation in the
audio. It's not that much to replace the card though, maybe $100 on Ebay.

I hate to be one of those people who thinks some miracle product
will cure everything[1], but ever since I managed to fix *both*
an Allen and Heath mixer's flaky insert *and* the flaky digitizer
on my old PalmPilot[2] with CAIG DeoxIT, I'm becoming one of "those
people".

Anyway, it seems like since Coke has sugar and whatnot in it that's
corrosive and since water (that you cleaned it off with) isn't the
greatest about not causing corrosion either, it might not be too
bad an idea to spray and clean all the contacts (including PCI card
edge and the connector on the back) with something like CAIG DeoxIT.

- Logan

[1] like most people think duct tape will fix anything that's
broken, and like my grandfather believed that Alka Seltzer
would cure just about any physical illness

[2] which I had unsuccessfully tried to fix many times prior
to that, by cleaning contacts with alcohol, and all other
kinds of tricks

The bad news: Sound can be degraded even in digital domain. (Think
shorts in lower bits).

Even badder news: Standard fix to coked electronics. Spray with Dow
scrubbing bubbles bathroom cleanser, scrub with soft brush. rinse with
warm water, rinse with distilled water, blow out any excess water with
DRY air hose. Did I mention if any ICs are in sockets they must be
removed first. Let dry overnight. And if any components are
water-sensitive those must be replaced before you try it.

Let me now tell you the worst news. I've "coked" a few pieces of gear
in my time and It's been about 50-50 between the above cleaning working
or the thing remaining trashed. PCI cards usually end up saved (as
someone noted , don't forget the connector it plugs into. Every
keyboard I've "coked" has died in spite of total disassembly etc.

Coke and it's sugar is VERY nasty on electronics. It creats low
resistance paths that can cause degratdations for decades.

Good Luck!

Benj

"Logan Shaw" wrote in message
...
Christopher M wrote:
So, tell me: I know we're dealing with the digital domain here. And
isn't it a basic truism that a digital device either works or doesn't
work? As in, there's no in-between?

Yes, except that when it doesn't work, that doesn't necessarily
mean that it fails catastrophically in a way that you notice.

For instance, a long time ago, I had a particular model Amiga
computer that had issues with DMA transfers over a certain size.
Everything would *appear* to work just fine, but when large
transfers (over like 64K, I think) were done, something would
go wrong with the clock, and a stream of data like this:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

would get transformed into something like this:

The quick brwn fox jumps over the laz#y dog.

That is, somewhere along the line, a byte was lost, all the
following bytes for a time were moved over by one, and
a random (yes, totally random!) byte was inserted at some
position to make up the difference. As you can imagine, this
was unpleasant when DMA was being used to write to the hard
drive.

This was a design or manufacturing flaw rather than a failure
that happened in the field. But the point remains that sometimes
digital gear can be off without totally not working.

On the other hand, it IS quite rare for that happen...

- Logan

Hi Logan,

Which Amiga? I bought a new A500 around 1989 and then got a used A3000 with
a Sunrize card around 1996. ( that was really sweet ). Those are the only
two I really used. I bought an A1000 and A2000 to 'have around' a few years
ago but never did anything with them. ( no room to set them up ). They've
all been in storage for many years now unfortunately.
--
John L Rice

John L Rice wrote:
"Logan Shaw" wrote in message
...

For instance, a long time ago, I had a particular model Amiga
computer that had issues with DMA transfers over a certain size.
Everything would *appear* to work just fine, but when large
transfers (over like 64K, I think) were done, something would
go wrong with the clock, and a stream of data like this:

Which Amiga? I bought a new A500 around 1989 and then got a used A3000 with
a Sunrize card around 1996. ( that was really sweet ). Those are the only
two I really used. I bought an A1000 and A2000 to 'have around' a few years
ago but never did anything with them. ( no room to set them up ). They've
all been in storage for many years now unfortunately.

Amiga 2000. Revision 6.1 of the motherboard, if I recall correctly.
Revision 6.2 and 6.3 of the motherboard didn't have the DMA problem.

I talked to the tech guy (who I also happened to attend computer
science classes with) at the local Amiga store (which store was
always struggling, but weren't they all?), and he found some info
in service manuals that indicated it sometimes helped to swap the
processor. At that time, there were pin-compatible MC68000
processors made by around 5 manufacturers, including Motorola and
Signetics, so we tried a Signetics chip, and no improvement over
the Motorola.

I think it would've been possible to get a motherboard swap approved,
but I'd have had to mail off the computer and live without it for
a month or two, so I decided to just decrease the maximum DMA size
and live with the minor performance hit.

Can you believe I remember all that crud nearly 15 years later? :-)

It was a fun little machine. I finally sold it in 1997 for $300 (!)
because I was moving cross country. I had stopped using it as
anything but just a terminal emulator for my modem, but I was in a
book store one day and on a lark picked up an Amiga magazine and
started flipping through the back of it, where I found that some
company was buying A2000s for $300. Which was a great price for
an 8-year-old computer that ran at 7.14 MHz at a time when 100 MHz
computers were commonplace...

- Logan

"Christopher M" wrote in message
news
OK, you can take your minds out of the gutter, or your noses off the
table. I'm talking about Coca Cola, spilled into my hard drive.

But I just got moved into my new place, and just set up the rest of
my
stuff, and I swear I'm hearing degraded audio. Now, I'm willing to
chalk it up to an overactive imagination.

You might be able to get a technical second opinion by running this
sound card test software for yourself:

RMAA 5.4

http://audio.rightmark.org/download.shtml

So, tell me: I know we're dealing with the digital domain here. And
isn't it a basic truism that a digital device either works or
doesn't
work? As in, there's no in-between? As in, if my MOTU soundcard were
actually damaged by the Coke spill, it would simply not function at
all?

First off, sound cards aren't perfectly digital devices. Analog
buffers make up a lot of their circuitry. Secondly, the basic truism
that a digital device either works or not is an over-simplifcation.
In fact vast portions of digital equipment is actually analog
circuitry, which is capable of being degraded.

You've got a new place. It isn't GOING to sound the same. Fix up your
room. Audio won't degrade because of the coke spilt on your electronic
equipment, but the equipment itself could and might well fail.

So fix your room, but while you're doing that, get a replacement drive and
transfer your existing audio. Be prepared to pick up another audio
interface too. If you have it in you, probably the best thing to do is plan
on doing at least a bare bones upgrade. Now's probably as good of a time as
any (for instance bare bone AMD 64 bit system from Tigerdirect is $399 with
512 MB of PC3200+ memory).

My guess is that no matter what you do as pertains to your current system,
you are probably always going to distrust it somewhat, so it's probably
better to be proactive on this issue.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio
"Christopher M" wrote in message
news
OK, you can take your minds out of the gutter, or your noses off the
table. I'm talking about Coca Cola, spilled into my hard drive.

This actually occurred about three months ago. At the time, my MOTU
outboard gear was in storage (I was between moves). But my soundcard
was in there.

Following standard procedure for these sorts of incidents, I
meticulously cleaned out the hard drive, along with its various cards,
with a toothbrush and clean water. The PC returned to working
condition, with no discernable problems since.

But I just got moved into my new place, and just set up the rest of my
stuff, and I swear I'm hearing degraded audio. Now, I'm willing to
chalk it up to an overactive imagination. I'm also willing to chalk it
up to perhaps not yet having properly set all the options for my
monitors, playback software, etc. Either way, it just doesn't seem to
SOUND like it used to sound.

So, tell me: I know we're dealing with the digital domain here. And
isn't it a basic truism that a digital device either works or doesn't
work? As in, there's no in-between? As in, if my MOTU soundcard were
actually damaged by the Coke spill, it would simply not function at
all?

Now, I know mechanical gear can result in degraded sound. Speakers can
quit vibrating correctly, bad circuits can add noise, etc. But can a
simple digital device -- like my soundcard -- actually go "halfway"
bad?

I'm hoping the answer is, "No, if the soundcard were affected by the
Coke,you wouldn't have sound problems, you just wouldn't have sound at
all." But please give me the hard truth either way.

FYI: I've got the 2408 outboard interface, with the standard PCI-324
card.

Thanks. I'm sure most of you can understand my neurotic worrying about
this.

Chris

"Logan Shaw" wrote in message
...
John L Rice wrote:
"Logan Shaw" wrote in message
...

For instance, a long time ago, I had a particular model Amiga
computer that had issues with DMA transfers over a certain size.
Everything would *appear* to work just fine, but when large
transfers (over like 64K, I think) were done, something would
go wrong with the clock, and a stream of data like this:

Which Amiga? I bought a new A500 around 1989 and then got a used A3000
with a Sunrize card around 1996. ( that was really sweet ). Those are
the only two I really used. I bought an A1000 and A2000 to 'have around'
a few years ago but never did anything with them. ( no room to set them
up ). They've all been in storage for many years now unfortunately.

Amiga 2000. Revision 6.1 of the motherboard, if I recall correctly.
Revision 6.2 and 6.3 of the motherboard didn't have the DMA problem.

I talked to the tech guy (who I also happened to attend computer
science classes with) at the local Amiga store (which store was
always struggling, but weren't they all?), and he found some info
in service manuals that indicated it sometimes helped to swap the
processor. At that time, there were pin-compatible MC68000
processors made by around 5 manufacturers, including Motorola and
Signetics, so we tried a Signetics chip, and no improvement over
the Motorola.

I think it would've been possible to get a motherboard swap approved,
but I'd have had to mail off the computer and live without it for
a month or two, so I decided to just decrease the maximum DMA size
and live with the minor performance hit.

Can you believe I remember all that crud nearly 15 years later? :-)

It was a fun little machine. I finally sold it in 1997 for $300 (!)
because I was moving cross country. I had stopped using it as
anything but just a terminal emulator for my modem, but I was in a
book store one day and on a lark picked up an Amiga magazine and
started flipping through the back of it, where I found that some
company was buying A2000s for $300. Which was a great price for
an 8-year-old computer that ran at 7.14 MHz at a time when 100 MHz
computers were commonplace...

- Logan

Thanks Logan, interesting stuff. I don't think I was ever more excited
about computers as when I was using Amigas. ;-)


--
John L Rice

In article writes:

The break-out box was safely tucked away in storage at the time. It
was only my hard drive -- with the PCI card inside -- that got Coke
spilled into it.

How did Coke get spilled on your hard drive? They're usually inside a
computer, or at least a box. And what PCI card inside.

What's your native langage? Perhaps we have a translation problem
here.

I'm just wondering: Can a "damaged" sound card create the same sort of
degradation issues that you get with overblown monitors, faulty mixer
outputs, or other MECHANICAL problems?

Sure. Components can deteriorate. Coke is corrosive to some materials
so perhaps isulation got damaged, or switch or jumper contacts are no
longer making good contact.

So to clarify again: The outboard unit didn't take the Coke hit. Only
the soundcard did.

A "soundcard" is a circuit card that goes into a computer. Was it out
in the open? Or was the MOTU host interface card (in the computer)
protected but the outboard box drenched? And what does the hard drive
have to do with any of this?

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo