s950 freezing when recording (pictures)

was moving around my studio recently hadn't had the s950 plugged in and went to start a new project today and when I went to record into the unit it just froze and displayed a bunch of:

|||Z|||Y|||Z
|||Y|||Z|||Y

across the screen...

turned the unit on and off again and it just freezes when it gets to the point where i'm just about to record something...

any of you ran into this problem?

any body help? please?

Never saw this before. But you could do a RAM test to check if the RAM causes the problem
Turn on the 950
press the 3 buttons all together 0+- (the blinking LED should now be dark)
then press LETTER

It take something like 15-20 seconds if you have the RAM expansion build in.

After the test hit ENT to get back to the normal mode.

peace

Cool ill give that a shot, i dont have the expanded ram though

pressed it and it says "Bad ICL1"

Did you try to check and reseat all ribbon cables inside the unit? If not yet, try this first.

About "Bad ICL1" error message, I had 2x S950 which were showing the same error message after running the test. But they were working flawlessly - no errors, not distorted sounds, nothing. Many are people getting the same or similar error message after running the RAM test, but it doesn't have any negative effect on the unit.

Try the ribbons and let us know the result.

ZWUKOLOW wrote:About "Bad ICL1" error message, I had 2x S950 which were showing the same error message after running the test. But they were working flawlessly - no errors, not distorted sounds, nothing. Many are people getting the same or similar error message after running the RAM test, but it doesn't have any negative effect on the unit.

:

Probably because they haven't filled up the memory and the bad chip isn't being used.
I had a unit years ago that wouldn't have issues until the memory was about 75% full because that's when the chip that was bad made a difference.

The way it responds is dependent on which chip is actually bad.

I know what are you trying to say, and I know what that error message does stand for. The thing is, as I already said I owned 2x S950 and none of them had any issues even with full memory used. Still have one S950, and no issues at all. All of them had that error message.

Yes there are reports with distortions and many other strange things connected with bad RAM chips, but my point was it's not always the case and we are still not sure it's the cause of OP's issue. That's why I suggested to check ribbon cables in the first place.

... i dont have the expanded ram though

sounds a bit weird, as the message

pressed it and it says "Bad ICL1"

is referring to one of the memory expansion boards. The on-board RAM is designated as IC45..IC51, ie. the memory chip numbers on PCB. Expansion board chips are referred as L1..L6 and H1..H6. So I suggest you re-check what's in your box

Usually the memory chips on expansion boards are socketed so it's not a big deal finding the bad one, or just reseating them in the sockets. The boards themselves also break loose sometimes.

I opened the unit up and detached and reattached all the cables and it seems to be working fine now. When I run the RAM test it still has the same results (Bad ICL1) but does not affect the unit in any way.

thanks for all your help guys,

forknspoon wrote:When I run the RAM test it still has the same results (Bad ICL1) but does not affect the unit in any way.

minor detail, but good to know, you always fail the RAM test if you boot with anything autoloaded from a disk.

wolzow wrote:

... i dont have the expanded ram though

sounds a bit weird, as the message

pressed it and it says "Bad ICL1"

is referring to one of the memory expansion boards. The on-board RAM is designated as IC45..IC51, ie. the memory chip numbers on PCB. Expansion board chips are referred as L1..L6 and H1..H6. So I suggest you re-check what's in your box

Usually the memory chips on expansion boards are socketed so it's not a big deal finding the bad one, or just reseating them in the sockets. The boards themselves also break loose sometimes.

I have an S950 without any RAM expansions that gets the same "Bad ICL1" error when a RAM test is run.
I'm in the process of sourcing some chips to replace the onboard RAM and diagnose the error.

I have two other S950's so I'm not exactly desperate but it would be nice to put this to rest. Due to the scant info about this error anywhere online, a proper diagnosis and correction would also be welcomed.

It's a shame that the S950 schematics and service manual are so elusive. The S900's RAM/CPU board is different to the S950 so the widely available S900 service manual is of no use.

I do notice that this error has an effect because very occasionally a sample will have a slight glitch/click/pop in it.
I imagine that this click/pop is the corrupted area of memory.
In the context of a tune this click will most probably be un-noticeable though.

ive never had this problem, and never tried the ram test...

but i do know that these ram expansion boards can come loose and even unsocket themselves with ease on s950s in general...

manually reseating the expansion board(s) would be the frst thing to start with and see if that has any difference on the results of the ram test or the problematic symptoms....


forgive me for being redundant if this has already been explored....