My E-MU card just died

[umd]

Shit.

We were jamming, the computer was just sitting there, nobody was operating it, when all of a sudden we hear this loud deafening white noise and I had to shut the whole thing down.

After some investigation, I traced it down to the E-MU EM8960 card ( which is part of the E-MU 1212/1820 combos ). After all these years, it simply died, all of a sudden ( perhaps it did not like what we were playing and committed suicide ).

I tried to insert that card in 3 different computers, either it won't be detected, or the computers won't boot with the card inserted.

Since I was lucky to have a spare one ( I have both the 1212m and a 1820m ), I simply replaced it with the other EM8960 card and everything is working again, but if this one dies as well, it's the end.

But for some reason, a used EM8960 card, which is around 20 years old as I write this, costs more than what I paid for the complete 1820 system many years ago ( second hand ).

I have no idea what happened, I see no apparent damage, nothing burnt, capacitors seem OK.

Does anyone has any idea of what it could be and where to start? I would like to try to repair it if it is possible. Thanks!

[digitalboytn]

I am sorry for Card...

I'm sure he was a nice emu

[maanga]

Sorry to hear about the death of your card.
May the card soul rest in peace.
Thank god he did not suffer very long during the last minutes.
Did you all play death metal that time?
Pray for another new card to assist in your music life.
Keep the music going.
Regards.

[digitalboytn]

Pray for another emu

[umd]

After some "praying" in eBay, I can't believe I got an E-MU 1616m pci that looks like new for 70 euros plus shipping...

Now let's see if I can put the 1820m and the 1616m in the same system using E-MU's drivers and the venerable Kx drivers and cook something like an E-MU 3232m or similar...

[umd]

An update, to who it may concern: I was able to put the 1820m and the 1616m working together in the same computer, in this setup the 1820m is using E-MU's drivers and the 1616m is using the kX drivers ( for no particular reason, simply the 1820m was there before using E-MU's drivers, so I just added the 1616m ).

Now the 1820m is configured with its clock externally sync'ed through ADAT with the input from the 1616m's ADAT output, and I can use all the 1616m's analog inputs that way in the 1820m.

The only issue is that everytime we start the computer it seems that I have to manually reload the firmware into the 1616m dock and change back and forth the settings in kX's drivers E-DSP control panel to have input signal into the 1616m's DSP. I could not ask for more from a free driver, still have to try to mess around with kX's command line tool and see if I can initialize one card after the other with a delay and see if it makes any difference.

BTW, we also downgraded from Windows 8.1 to Windows 7, but in all fairness at the same time the hdd was also upgraded with an old SSD disk I had laying around ( I must say I never tried to install these soundcards in newer Windows OS'es, but that computer is also not so recent ). For some reason something in that change eliminated all the audio farts and burps that lasted for a few seconds in the first start we had before.

I know this is not a very deep experiment, but please understand that while I make these observations I cannot be bothering other people that are just waiting to do a jam session and don't expect to be bothered with technical stuff, so this is just my testimonal.

[whyterabbyt]

Shit.

We were jamming, the computer was just sitting there, nobody was operating it, when all of a sudden we hear this loud deafening white noise and I had to shut the whole thing down.

My 1820M breakout box did the same sort of thing, replacing a couple of specific caps worked.

FWIW, ebay over here seems to have a couple of them going fairly cheaply.

[Sahul]

In case you need more spare parts, both an EMU 1212m and an 1820m are currently for sale on Wallapop Spain:

https://es.wallapop.com/item/tarjeta-de ... -773426783
https://es.wallapop.com/item/tarjeta-so ... -928295936

[umd]

Shit.

We were jamming, the computer was just sitting there, nobody was operating it, when all of a sudden we hear this loud deafening white noise and I had to shut the whole thing down.

My 1820M breakout box did the same sort of thing, replacing a couple of specific caps worked.

FWIW, ebay over here seems to have a couple of them going fairly cheaply.

Ah, yes, thanks, I have some information saved about that, my 1820M dock never had any caps replaced, but I suspect that in this case the OS / ssd hdd upgrade also played a role.. The LatencyMon tool from Resplendency software shows much better results in this machine with Win7 than with Win8.1. This is in this specific setup, of course.

What I am 100% certain sure is that the previous internal 1010 card died...

[umd]

In case you need more spare parts, both an EMU 1212m and an 1820m are currently for sale on Wallapop Spain:

https://es.wallapop.com/item/tarjeta-de ... -773426783
https://es.wallapop.com/item/tarjeta-so ... -928295936

Awesome, thanks for the information!

[Sahul]

And there's also this one from Germany, which is untested but looks mint. Maybe worth the risk for 20€+shipping:

https://www.kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/ ... 4-228-5081

[umd]

Thanks, but that is not a 1010 card. ( a 0404 card perhaps, without the cables? )

That seller should revise the item's description.

[whyterabbyt]

a 0404 card perhaps, without the cables?

yup, think so.

[umd]

An update, to who it may concern ( and before I forget how I did it )...

I read the info in the following thread ( Thanks to all the nice people who took the time to experiment and share the results ):

viewtopic.php?t=529349

( note: I am using Windows 7, just because there are drivers for this machine )

- I installed v2.3 of EMU's drivers and patchmix 2.1 ( it seems that v2.2 does some resampling which is not needed here and impairs performance?). Both cards got EMU's drivers installed and after a reboot only one of them worked, since EMU's drivers are not prepared for multiple cards.

- I then exited Patchmix in the taskbar and installed kX drivers v3553, but when prompted if I wanted to install the driver for card <whatever compatible card is in your system>, I clicked "no" everytime.

- I then went to the device manager in Windows, selected the 1616m card, right-clicked it and choosed "update driver", and manually selected the kX driver.

- reboot.

- did a very simple DSP routing in kX drivers to send 1616m's analog inputs into its ADAT output, and had the 1820m's clock set to external, using the 1616m's ADAT output for that.

- Since kX drivers don't seem to allow clock sync input, the only solution seems to be having it this way ( EMU's drivers clock set to external and receiving clock input from kX drivers ).

- to do: In the next session, take some screenshots of kX driver's settings, it seems that having an ADAT loopback connection set was messing things in each reboot, still have to dig into that...

[musicdoc]

Why this attachment to an old 20 yo card? Is there something special about it when any number of modern variants can be had quite affordably? I seem to remember an emu sampler/synth that might have been part of the package back then. But that was many moons ago:)