illegal general instruction, akai freezes, same ol same ol

SO for two weeks my akai 1000 (blue, 128mb, JJOS 4.99) started freezing and "illegal general instruction" followed by a bunch of code pops up. let me just say im pretty much over MPCs now only because ive been focusing on fixing rather than make music anymore. i try to keep my workspace clean, dust regularly but this was kind of a last straw moment. from having a malfunctioning mpc2kxl for years ive had my fair share of lost beats, samples and now once again i find another mishap with my 1000. sorry guys just had to vent...anyway i did search of 'illegal general instruction' on this forum and the BUG forum with some good input but no concrete solution so im kinda stuck. it happens usually when accessing my CF, but now it just happens auto or from pressing any key. once again im sacred to sample or load a beat on this shit!

-i reinstalled OS (JJOS 4.99)
-powered on while erase is held down
-seems to keep it together for a bit when CF card isnt in, but then still happens within 5 min
-CF card is Kingston 4GB

should i reinstall another, lower OS?
CF card too big?

from what i read it could be a number of things, but overall sounds like hardware malfunctio and would assume isnt worth to research further.... and to be blunt im at the point of abandoning this crap.....

mumkai wrote: sounds like hardware malfunctio and would assume isnt worth to research further.... .

Why not? Don't want to fix the problem?

Sounds like a hardware problem to me to. The first and eaisest to fix would be bad CF or bad RAM.

If not, Loose connnections between the CF card, CF bay hardware and the rest of the machine could be a prime culprit. Could be loose, broken, or shorted internal connections in general for that matter. Gotta check it. Unless you just don't want to fix it of course...

its not that i dont want to fix it. i didnt want to come off a debbie downer im just somewhat fed up and with the small time i have slowly trying move onto ableton..its mostly regarding losing soooooo much material and you know if youre on the grind, in that very moment of making a great beat, youre not thinking to save every second. aint as fast and easy as Cmd+S. ive had to push back deadlines, overall losing money and the small clientele i have because of my mpcs.

ive clean out any dust inside pretty every time ive opened it up, which is about at least twice a month since april. used plenty of deoxit for contacts i feel arent working properly. back in May i had Forat look at the CF bay when he fixed my rotary encoder. and he said its fine as long as im putting the disk in correctly, which we know you need to get down with. ill format a different CF with a smaller storage capacity and load it up once i put my mpc back together.

is this a common problem with bad RAM?

Any "bad" component in the system can cause it to fail, even (or especially) if it is simply causing a short circut. If you want to rule it out, simply remove and/or try replacing it.

If the CF is the problem, I doubt it has anything to do with the card's capacity, just the fact that it's defective. Many users have reported they have no trouble using cards much larger than that.

I'm sorry about your lost work -- I think that really sucks -- but frankly as someone who has owned the same Grande Holdings blue & red era hardware since it came out I have to say that I would never want my professional income to be solely dependent on the fuctiionality of one of those boxes because despite the "Pro" BS on the label they simply aren't built to anywhere near professional hardware standards. The current Nukai models are better, but that's not really saying much and they still don't really meet "pro" standards.

My attitude has always been that you can work with the cheap stuff if you absolutely have to, just be prepared to know how to fix it when it dies.

make sure you format in the MPC with MPC OS as well, not in your computer

I had a randomly defektive Blue mpc 1k, freezing from time to Time,
Then a Black bkn wolkig Fine, now a Black bk, working also Fine.
I suppose that there are Some Older mpc s Out there Not working with Jjos.
A Friend and his girlfriend got 2 brandnew mpc s 1k both defekt.....

The best u can do: get a better One.

bliprock wrote:make sure you format in the MPC with MPC OS as well, not in your computer

I reformatted my CF card. as i always did i formatted it in the MPC. still having those problems. Before it freezes the screen contrast would flicker slightly. thought maybe it was a bad connection since im going to a surge protector. so i plug it into the wall outlet and still freezes and the same message occurs. i might reboot with another, lower OS, but then the beats ive done in my current OS JJOS 4.99 would be obsolete, right? anyways im spending more time on ableton and onto better things... well, at least until i think of or can even afford to get another mpc. thnx for the input.

try without the memory extension.. sometimes faulty memory makes it freeze.

reformat with the mpc the cf card-/change cf card.

open the mpc to check if all connections and cables are well connected.