Alfredo Giwisch
New member
Hi folks, I´m newbie in this forum and my question is a bit long.
Last week I purchased two TASCAM FW-1082 units for parts & repair. After doing some maintenance fixing the power supply changing all the panel switches on the first and repairing a broken PCB on the second both units are working again. The strange issue on the first unit is the master fader behaviour. When I turn on the unit the master fader 0db button doesn´t work sending at the same time on FL Studio a permanent fader midi event because the faders are MIDI events and touch sensitive. After 30 minutes powered the master fader starts to work properly meaning that the touch sensors and fader motor circuitry are working fine.
My big question is if this issue maybe relates to a faulty flash EEPROM, an issue caused by the constant sector data writing and chip aging. Because the FW-1082 unit memorize the last faders movements & positions writing every surface control change data to the internal flash memory after months or years of use the FW-1082 starts to fail because memory flash devices have a life endurance of only 100.000 writing cycles.
To avoid sectors write issues on flash memory devices manufacturers datasheets recommends after reaching maximal write cycles to move/rotate the storage data to an new "unused memory sector" For example every 50.000 writing cycles data should be moved to a new sector. For that is important to have free memory unused space and a incremental software counter.
The data move/rotate to a new sector procedure is performed by the firmware code but if this feature is not implemented on most devices after months or years depending of the hours of use the unit will start to fail because the data write/retrieval on the flash memory on same sector remains corrupted.
The other big problem came when the firmware code is upgraded. In the case of properly data rotation by the firmware code using an incremental counter this information is lost on the upgrade process if the utility don´t read and write former counter data.
Taking all that into account TASCAM design idea using the flash memory as storage device for permanent faders/MIDI data control changes is not appropriate. Sounds a bit strange my questions here but the idea is to see if someone experienced weird issues with the FW-1082 not only the faders issue.
Summarizing I don´t like the "faders memory feature" using the internal flash memory if this was not properly implemented on the firmware code doing the data rotation to a new sector avoiding in this way data corruption.
Former devices use a conventional static RAM and lithium battery for permanent data storage/retrieval being not affected on write issues but the story on later flash devices (IC flash memory, pen drives, SD cards, HDD solid devices, etc) is totally different.
I really appreciate if someone knows more information about such issues. Regards.
Last week I purchased two TASCAM FW-1082 units for parts & repair. After doing some maintenance fixing the power supply changing all the panel switches on the first and repairing a broken PCB on the second both units are working again. The strange issue on the first unit is the master fader behaviour. When I turn on the unit the master fader 0db button doesn´t work sending at the same time on FL Studio a permanent fader midi event because the faders are MIDI events and touch sensitive. After 30 minutes powered the master fader starts to work properly meaning that the touch sensors and fader motor circuitry are working fine.
My big question is if this issue maybe relates to a faulty flash EEPROM, an issue caused by the constant sector data writing and chip aging. Because the FW-1082 unit memorize the last faders movements & positions writing every surface control change data to the internal flash memory after months or years of use the FW-1082 starts to fail because memory flash devices have a life endurance of only 100.000 writing cycles.
To avoid sectors write issues on flash memory devices manufacturers datasheets recommends after reaching maximal write cycles to move/rotate the storage data to an new "unused memory sector" For example every 50.000 writing cycles data should be moved to a new sector. For that is important to have free memory unused space and a incremental software counter.
The data move/rotate to a new sector procedure is performed by the firmware code but if this feature is not implemented on most devices after months or years depending of the hours of use the unit will start to fail because the data write/retrieval on the flash memory on same sector remains corrupted.
The other big problem came when the firmware code is upgraded. In the case of properly data rotation by the firmware code using an incremental counter this information is lost on the upgrade process if the utility don´t read and write former counter data.
Taking all that into account TASCAM design idea using the flash memory as storage device for permanent faders/MIDI data control changes is not appropriate. Sounds a bit strange my questions here but the idea is to see if someone experienced weird issues with the FW-1082 not only the faders issue.
Summarizing I don´t like the "faders memory feature" using the internal flash memory if this was not properly implemented on the firmware code doing the data rotation to a new sector avoiding in this way data corruption.
Former devices use a conventional static RAM and lithium battery for permanent data storage/retrieval being not affected on write issues but the story on later flash devices (IC flash memory, pen drives, SD cards, HDD solid devices, etc) is totally different.
I really appreciate if someone knows more information about such issues. Regards.
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