Well I bought my 4th 840av! This time things will be different I swear

[rezwits]

Well I got lucky, I ended up getting a SuperMac 8•24 PDQ as the unknown "Bonus" card!   Which is great for the 840 as a main monitor with an external NTSC monitor for editing 720x480 640x480 or 320x240 resolution videos for the web...

http://lowendmac.com/video/spectrum824pdq.html

Laters...

 

[techknight]

I like that philosophy. Design a really high end machine, but make it with cheap ass parts...

Planned obsolescence... 

 

[zackl]

If anybody can bring 'em back it's Uni 

I think I sent him 5 or 6 840av boards for re-capping

2 were working came back working 

of the 4 dead I think we got 1, maybe 2 working

Treat those 840avs well those of you that have them adn get the caps replaced ASAP!

 

[rezwits]

Got the 840av board back from Uniserver!  Dusted out the case/fan slapped in 128 MB of RAM, 1 MB of VRAM (for 2 MB), the 2 Nubus Cards, and fired it right up (I did have to replace the floppy drive but) no problems.  Working really good.

The only problem the board had to begin with was when you first power it on like say in the morning, you had to force restart and then it would work.

So, far tho, this thing fires up instantly no problem!  And is purring like a kitten.  He did a really good job, I am happy.

So I guess I should get my signature setup right?

...

 

[Paralel]

What did you find out about the optical out on that audio card?

 

[rezwits]

No audio out so far, (not even and probably won't ever just do plain audio out).  I am getting ready next week to setup the MOTU 828 with Logic, for DAT input with MIDI control, just been playing with other things right now, and haven't had it more than two days, four days total, since I sent it off right when I got it.  Believe me you, I am going to go all out figuring this thing!

Laters...

 

[Paralel]

I'm sure we're all looking forward to hearing what you discover. The unique software and hardware that likely resides within that system are of interest to most of us that loved the original PS1

 

[olePigeon]

I don't know if this is your card specifically, but maybe it'll help:

http://www.symetrixaudio.com/kb/NB24_ug.pdf

 

[Byrd]

The only problem the board had to begin with was when you first power it on like say in the morning, you had to force restart and then it would work.

Mine does the same - I can only point to the PSU for this?

 

[rezwits]

I actually think that didn't get fixed, because I let the computer sleep(off) for over 12 hours, and when I tried to start it up today, I got the "startup hang" force restart and back in business.  I don't really mind, if it is the PSU, I have a back in my other 840 box that died.  So we'll see when that goes down I guess.

 

[Paralel]

Some machines are just crap with certain extensions and MacOS revisions coming back from Sleep. Sleep has never been one of the most reliable things until just very recently.

 

[Hotdog Zanzibar]

Yeah, I never put my OS 9 machines to sleep back in the day. Just loaded up After Dark (before it got too buggy w/ later OSes) and set a timer. On Power Macs, I set up Energy Saver to just shut the screen off after a while, but tried to use After Dark as much as possible because I was running CRTs. 

 

[SE30_Neal]

Is the 840av a special machine?

 

[Hotdog Zanzibar]

It's the fastest non-PowerPC Mac ever made. They were built specifically for audio/video work with a quick co-processor. 

Unfortunately they weren't built very well, so they are relatively rare these days. Between brittle plastics and a motherboard that is extra-susceptible to leaking capacitors, there just aren't a lot of them left.

 

[uniserver]

I like the quadra 700,  a really good machine.

The plastics of the 840av are depressing...  the bad caps hurt those boards.

at least the quadra 800 was made pretty good.

maybe the best 68k machine would be a IIci with an over clocked daystar, 48mhz 040 lol....

 

[rezwits]

With an external CD300...

Oh and I should have put OFF and mean OFF, not sleep (prior post) cause as far as I know you can't sleep and 840av HAHA damn. confusion. my bad.

Laters...

 

[rezwits]

Optical Audio Output Update:

Not going good.  Crashes quite a bit.

I am getting some SCSI2SDs here in the next two weeks, and doing a reinstall of software, because his system was really bad, but I want to keep it intact until I get everything working properly (drivers, system morsels, etc).  So it's turning out to be a salvage job, I mean the guy had 5 different midi drivers all with different EM settings, it doesn't need that!  I think he just had problems and he really only converted audio/midi files to this VAG format for PS1.

It's looking bleak tho.  The only thing I did manage to do was Casio Keyboard send -> to the Computer. but I couldn't get return or output from the computer back to control the Casio Keyboard for playback control.  Messed with it for 3 hours.

Lot's of crashes.

I know if I install the midi correctly, throw some Finale on there, things will be fine.

The I can work on the MMC control to <-> from Logic, thru the light pipe.

Laters... plus life goes on you know? Cribbage? etc...