#The PAR: Very Unreliable
39 messages in this thread
I've about had it with the unreliabililty of the PAR. I've sent my
board back and was told there was no problem with it; I exchanged my
drive (even after Micropolis told me there was nothing wrong with the
drive). I've reformated, optimized, lowered my block limit and
everything else that has been suggested by everyone.
There is something flaky in the PAR system. Often, but not everytime,
when I join two .ani's together, one or more frame will appear with a
white grid across the entire frame. Sometimes I can just delete the
new "joined" animation and do the join procedure again and the
resultant new animation will be fine. I just deleted a frame from an
animation — which worked fine. Then I deleted another frame and now
several frames in the animation have the white grid, the new
animation is ruined.
I haven't bothered to report all these problems I have been
experiencing because I get tired of being told that I am the only
person in the history of the universe to have reported such problems.
Or being told by DPS that the drive is definately to blame — and the
drive people insisting the opposite.
I want this fixed. As it stands now, the PAR is so unreliable that I
cannot depend upon it.
P.S. I'm using 1.30b and I've never had my drive more than half full.
Have you considered that maybe the hardware just doesn't _like_ you?
:^) One thing to try may be to go back to the original shipping
version of the program – remember the "b" in 1.30b means beta…
I have been using the 1.30b very hard, around the clock, for the past
three weeks doing all these video rotoscope effects. Extensive use
of the DPS_PAR.PXP as well and outside of a few known bugs in file
management the version works without fail. I have a thought that
your problems seem to be intermittant file corruption. ie. it seems
by your description that it is never a repeatable problem. Assuming
that both the drive and the board are functioning OK you might look
else where for the problem. Like cables and power supply
intermittancy. I once had a problem with one of my machines
corrupting a frame during the rendering process. I finally
discovered that with all the cards and RAM I had installed my power
supply connectors were getting very hot and burning the plastic near
the +5 volt pins. The current was a surprising 16 amps at 5 volts.
Well this was only 80 watts but the problem was the 16 amps flowing
through the tiny pins of the power supply connector to the MB. This
connection, over time had over heated to the point that it had
reduced the springiness to the pins and the connection had become
intermittant. I ended up soldering the +5 volt wires into the MB and
my files were clean 100% during the rendering. The point of all this
is that with all the junk we add to these MB's the power supply
connections are for the most part inadequate and need beefing up to
support the added current loads. Did you ever feel the PAR, the
Targa+ and the TBC IV? They all run very hot. This heat is
indicative of high current through that little connector.
You are quite right to suggest looking elsewhere. At least keep an
open mind. The trouble is when you have new (beta yet) software and
hardware and you are new to both, it is hard to locate a problem.
I've just spent the last two days with a problem of slow and
intermittent failure of file transfer from – but not to – the PAR
machine. Because this whole setup is new and to make matters
complicated, using a new Lapstation bus extender, we were sure it had
to a problem of interrupts or memory management. No, it was the
NE2000 that has been working fine for a year just decided to go ape
at that moment. Is that Murphy's or Sod's (toast always falls butter
side down) law.
After some other problems a month or so ago, I bought a new 300 watt
power supply and all new power cables. I keep a nine inch fan
directed on the open side of the computer and the PAR drive stays
quite cool — I've never felt it even warm. Good thoughts. Thanks.
I dunno . . .
Yes, a 300 watt power supply is a must in this business but what I was
having problems with was the connector on the mother board that
wasn't handling the current. It got so hot that the plastic actually
turned brown and the metal spring pins lost their springiness and
became intermittant.
PMFJI
>>>I have a thought that your problems seem to be intermittant file corruption.
ie. it seems by your description that it is never a repeatable problem.
Assuming that both the drive and the board are functioning OK you might look
else where for the problem. Like cables and power supply intermittancy. I
once had a problem with one of my machines corrupting a frame during the
rendering process.<<<
The intermittant problems are the most difficult to diagnose. I hard
a customer with intermittent read/write errors on his hard drive.
Turned out his hardcard power connector was flaky, I plugged the hard
drive directly into the power supply and the problem is gone.
I would strip everything out of the computer that I didn't need and
see how that works. Or I would put the PAR into another machine and
bang around on the system to see if it breaks.
Right Tim: Being able to switch accessories to a different machine is
a good way to troubleshoot. I can do that here but many have only
one machine. I just wanted to point out that, sometimes, problems
that seem to come from the PAR are totally unrelated to the PAR. If
you think about it the +5v supply takes a very heavy hit on current
and a 200 watt load is 40 amps. Amperage is what determines the wire
diameter. Those little 22ga wires that connect the power supply to
the MB are barely marginal and the plastic connector certainly
isn't. It may have been adequate for the typical home PC but those of
us using targa+ and PAR, and TBCIV with 32 megs of RAM plus a DX266
CPU are pulling this kind of current. You can put fans on hard
drives and fans on CPU's but if that connector is hot hot then the
voltage to power all this stuff could become intermittant, causing
little glitches in files. It has happened here and to a friend of
mine in town.
Just to tell you what problem I had, when installing the PAR, the PAR crashed
every few minutes, eventually we discovered two pins of the Micropolis drive
touched the metal underplate of the harddisk slot in my PC, after putting tape
inbetween everything has worked perfect I've no worked about one week with the
PAR and done about 4 minutes of animation +tests and have had no problem since.
(excluding rotoscoping but that was my personnal mistake)
Christophe
Watch out for that tape as it may puncture. You may want to rerplace with a
sheet of plastic that would be more durable.
No problem its an insulated tape, and I've got 2 layers of it, it has worked
fine, if it melts I'll probably smell it 🙂
Greg,
<< Have you considered that maybe the hardware just doesn't like you? >>
Oh, hell yes. I _know_ the hardware doesn't like me — but that's a constant
and I'm dealing with a variable.
Alec Jaosn
>> I _know_ the hardware doesn't like me…
Well, here's what you have to do – reread that erotic message
(#125674) you posted a few months ago on the forum about the way you
treat your equipment so lovingly _out loud_ to your hardware – either
it will love you again or crash and burn totally! At least it will
be reproducible! :^)
I'm not sure if Gus' still doing the PAR stuff, but if so- I'd like to
be able to move stuff from one directory to another. I've been
afraid to try the "move" command in dos, but I don't see anything
about "move" w/ the PAR. If you wouldn't mind, please let him know.
I'm not sure of his address.
I wouldn't try the MOVE command from DOS on the PAR if I were you!
The reason that the command works in DOS is that a pointer is just
changed to point into a different directory. The PAR is not a DOS
disk, and doesn't have this type of file structure.
>I wouldn't try the MOVE command from DOS on the PAR if I were you!
The reason that the command works in DOS is that a pointer is just
changed to point into a different directory. The PAR is not a DOS
disk, and doesn't have this type of file structure.<
Yep, I knew that. 🙂 I still don't know how (if) it's possible to
move an animation from one project to another. Can this be done?
The safest is to copy it as an ANI file to your local hard disk then
copy it back to the PAR in a different directory.
>move .ani
Hmm.. I never thought of that. Thanks.
I had the same problems you have, Iam so happy that we have a own
technical department who solved all the problems. Finally it had
nothing to do with the PAR.. Maybe checking the following things may
help you. Check if the board(s) are securly fastnend in the slot of
the motherboard. Check if the BNC-connector PINS are OK. Check if
your chassis of the computer doesn't create voltage-problems. Check
if you have sufficient cooling in the system. And last but not least
(i don't know why ??) but never use the ROOT of the PAR.
Again i had all the problems you are refering to, but after checking
my equipment thoroughly the PAR brings me only sunshine. And tons of
stuff going in and out every day without any problem.
Theo:
>> And last but not least (i don't know why ??) but never use the ROOT of
>> the PAR.
Shouldn't make any difference – the PAR is not a normal DOS disk, and
the ROOT directory is actually just another directory called ROOT!
Gregory,
You're probably right. But the same time we changed the
BNC-connectors and the computercase i decided not to use the ROOT
directory of the PAR anymore, because that was where the problems
started everytime. But as i suggested (?) maybe this had nothing to
do with it. ?!
Theo,
What gamma settings do you use with 3DS and PAR???
Christophe
Christophe,
I will check that for you tonight. I know i followed the advice
written down in the booklet Inside 3D-studio. But again i'll check
it.
I just had a kind of crash with the PAR today, resulting in the loss of several
luckely only testfiles.
Strange it happened after I deleted files in on project, then deleted the
project directory, and whoops other files where gone in other directories and
the ones I deleted turned up in there place???
I had just done an optimize before it happened.
BTW can anyone give me the optimal backup device for the PAR??? I
have a 2.1GB external SCSI drive which I currently use to store
important projects, but that is not what intended this drive for, my
128MO is to small for the PAR files, so which cost-efficient solution
do I have??
Your PAR mishap is exactly the same thing that caused me such grief a
few weeks ago. I was so mad I was contemplating setting fire to some
great public buildings. (A little Monty Python humor for MartinF and
all) Please send a note explaining your troubles to Brick Eksten. I
wasn't the only one who had this directory scrambling take place when
it happened to me and you won't be the last unless the DPS guys hear
our collective voices. I, too, had just done an OPTIMIZE and the
scramble directories occured at the moment that I tried to delete
files and the project directory which they were in.
For backup from the PAR the Exabyte 8500 series tape drives is quite
good. The tapes handle at least 4.5 gigs of data. Its relatively
expensive but it is hassle free.
Bob
Yes I thought my problem was similar to yours, and it is exactly the same thing
that happened to me, description is identical. So this can not be a
coincidence.
I'll give through to my dealer, who said and asked me to do so when having
problems.
I'll also make a note to Brick Eksten.
BTW I'd rather place dynamite under some ugly buildings, at least we would get
rid of those, we might feel a little better.
So everyone who has experienced a similar problem please let me know, so I can
put a hughe explosive list to Brick and DPS.
Christophe
Chris,
>> So everyone who has experienced a similar problem please let me know, so I
can put a hughe explosive list to Brick and DPS. <<
me too. Deleting projects and then the software says I need to reformat. I only
saved my other .ani and .stl files by DOS copying them to a normal hardrive.
Martin & others:
>> Deleting projects and then the software says I need to reformat.
Is this only through PAR.EXE or from DOS, also?
There is a reproducible bug in the ver 1.30b software that crashes the
entire disk when deleting the project directories. I avoid deleting
project directories until I'm ready to re format the drive. I'm sure
DPS is aware of this bug. Avoiding deletion of project directories
allows the software to run flawlessly. This was not a bug in earlier
versions.
Sorry Don to contradict you, I'm running 1.29 of the software and I
had the same crash after the deletion of on directory.
CVO,
I, too, experienced the excitement of scrambled PAR. Using a earlier
version (not 1.30b) to do a little maintainance, I deleted all the
animations in a project, deleted some stills in another project, then
deleted the empty project. That was the last time I ever accessed
the data on that disk with PAR.EXE. PARDRV allowed me to access
fragments of the disk from DOS, but files and directories were
scrambled and most of the data was missing.
My new policy: "Delete no project before its time" (time to reformat,
that is)
After hearing a similar story following a optimize procedure, I've
extended this policy to optimizing as well. For now, I think the
best advice is what I heard here on the forum – don't use the PAR for
animation storage.
JKJ (still loving his PAR)
>>For backup from the PAR the Exabyte 8500 series tape drives is quite
good. The tapes handle at least 4.5 gigs of data. Its relatively
expensive but it is hassle free.<<
I second this. I just wish the PAR could transfer files faster. I
backed up a 775 meg ANI and it took about 100 minutes to do it. This
was of course after I had the same crash that *many* others have
had.
/__________From your message___________\\
I just wish the PAR could transfer files faster. I backed up a 775 meg ANI and
it took about 100 minutes to do it. __________________________________________
Just imagine if you were stuck backing it onto a pile of those QIC 80
format tapes, yowsa! Could you have an .ANI file span a tape? Glad
I don't have to know the answer to that one.
you could probably span a 775 meg ani across a QIC-80, but I am not that
masochistic. I'll stick with my handy 8mm.
Bob:
You're not alone, crashwise — BUT _I_ had all the original TGA's backed up on
my Exabyte 8505, so it was no more than a large hassle to re-build!
Dave
(By the way, I love the one Python sketch where the architect is explaining how
people will be slaughtered as they move through the building! Every
architect's dream!<g>)
David:
/_____________From your message_____________\\
BUT _I_ had all the original TGA's backed up on my Exabyte 8505
_______________________________________________
Lucky weasel!
And now for something completely different:
Your tenants will whisked on conveyor belts down these corridors here past
murals depicting Mediterranean scenes and through the rotating knives. Of
course this part is heavily sound proofed. The blood goes down these chutes
here …
Oh well, it was something like that.
Bob
>>the rotating knives
Exactly! Good for a smile in the middle of the workday, eh what?
Dave
Christophe,
I had/have the same problems. And i'm 100 % sure it is the software (PAL)
I'm checking these things out now with the DPS-people in the STATES.
But we are doing this in the evening/night so i will get back to you.
In between render to TGA-files on your DOS drive and export to PAR
afterwards, otherwise you will loose a lot of stuff (like i did).
The backup i use is a Colorado 4 GB Powertape SCSI-device.
Bye,
Theo
Well I already render to my seperate SCSI harddrive, then I mostly go through
compositing to the PAR, but I've backed up all important ani files on my
harddrive, however I guess I'll need a DAT or other Tape device for backups
eventually, hate to use my Barracuda drive for storage only, it is my fastest
drive, so.
Hope DPS will come with a solution for those bugs in the software, otherwise
the PAR is a fantastic device, certainly for use in my business, which
concentrates mostly on buildings.
Ciao,
Christophe