so, i took a shower, took a nap and woke up feeling a little better than the last few days.

let's hope things are started to stabilizing into a new normal and my adrenaline glands are done spazzing out, now.

i'll do the ram thing later - right now i should be focusing on finishing the update post.

stick two in slot one crashed.

it's 15 year old ram, and i've used it quite heavily. it's possible that two sticks are bad.

let's try slot two.

stick one in slots three and four also crashed.

bad stick of ram, right?

well, let's see if i can find a stick that doesn't crash before i come to that conclusion.

stick one in slot two crashed.

see, i'm convinced it's not the ram, so if i go through all of this and it crashes every single time, i'll have to conclude it's something else. i guess there could be a nasty short in the board. but, i'm going to have to operate on some other cause.

and, if i can find a stable configuration then i've fixed the problem.

stick one in slot one did in fact crash.

ok.

let's try slot 2...

ok, so i'm going to do a rigorous ram testing here, on second thought. i have a simple test i can do to see if it's the problem or not.

there's one stick in the first slot.

let me open cubase, with the m-audio drivers, and see if it crashes after an hour or so.

i've done this before and mostly reduced the issue to seating. it was running quite smoothly...

but, if i'm right that they messed with the bios then they probably shorted the ram again. it's a little finnicky.

so, i'll do a little cleaning while i wait for the board to cool down and then start again with one as i finish that update post, again. see, i need a word document open on the recording pc as i'm doing it....

ok.

i have extra ram.

let me strip back down to one stick and go from there.

so, yeah - it just crashed in the m-audio driver, so that was just a fluke.

i don't want to use wdm because i learned a while back that windows automatically resamples streaming audio for you - and you have no control over it. i figured that out because i could hear it.

it was designed for consumer audio, of course. they fixed this in later versions of windows, but it's a quirk of xp. so, you want to use asio if you're recording with xp in 2021.

but, i mean...

i can just avoid the default asio driver then, right? i have no real actual use for it.

ok, so it just froze with the mixer off and the default asio driver loaded.

the only actual asio device in the machine and turned on right now is the m-audio delta 1010 card. so, let  me try it again with a direct connection to the m-audio card.

i guess that if i can repeatedly avoid crashing with a direct connection and crash with a layered connection then it's something in the asio framework.

you have to understand that a very large percentage of the best electronic music ever created was recorded on an 8-bit atari.

this 32-bit dual core windows xp machine is pretty high tech, in comparison.

i'm not actually old enough to have ever recorded anything on an atari.

i had a friend with a commodore 64, but the first computer i actually used for recording was an entry level pentium. which is pretty old, nowadays, but not atari old.

fuck, i could be using an atari.

actually, if you have one...

ok, so it doesn't want to crash with the m-audio card.

the m-audio was purchased for playback, not for recording. like, it was meant to be a part of a stereo system, but it didn't end up used that way. it has rca outs and ultimately connects to a stereo receiver on the desk...it's a backup...i can't multitrack into it or even record a guitar through it...that's why i have a mixer...

the soundblaster interface can take a single line in, but it's in the 16-bit pc and i want to keep it there for now. so, i need the alesis to work...and, i mean, it's what this is built around...

let me see what happens when i load it with the generic asio drivers.

i should point out that, because i'm using xp, the operating system uses wdm as it's sound engine. this is archaic, even by windows standards. but, i've got it turned off in the driver framework.

if it's stable with the other devices now (it wasn't previously) then i guess i can try to update the firmware or play with some driver settings...

i know i'm dancing around something deeper, but i ultimately want the device to work, first and foremost. i keep pointing out that i don't actually even care if i'm being spied on, i just don't have a fast enough computer to be spied on and record on at the same time. 

yeah, the build date is different now - it's oct 13, 2005.

i will update my daw when i move to the 64 bit os, but this is the best 32 bit daw there is, and i've messed around quite a bit.

i also need this to be halfways usable because i've got so many projects done up in it.

if it's hardware, i can replace it, but i don't think it is....

so, the machine froze on launching cubase, again. dammit...

i had the mixer on.

let's try with the mixer off.

i should note that my dns client service has reinstalled randomly a few times, which makes no sense.

i can see these little glimpses, but i need to be clear - i don't have a network card installed in the machine. 

i noticed a few months (years?) ago that my laptop was connecting to the microsoft servers....without a network card installed.

so, i mean - i disabled the integrated wired nics in the bios. the spec for the board says it doesn't have an integrated wireless (although i suspect it does and it was just shorted out on this model). i've turned off everything i can get to in the bios, and windows says there's nothing there. so, whatever it's accessing is inaccessible to me, and that's all there is to it.

but, there's something going on...

see, this was completely stable, and i really didn't change anything, so i don't know...

ok, so this is better, now, but i won't know how stable it is for a while.

this is what i did after the script was finished:

- increased pagefile size

- set number of processors to 2

- uninstalled and reinstalled alesis drivers and maudio drivers

- uninstalled three step cubase install and reinstalled with 2 step (just the copy protection device and the update file, not the base sx 3)

- took everything out of the vst plugin folder

- reinstalled the update on top of itself a second time

it's launching without instantly crashing, and that's good enough for now.

so, back to the update post, then.

well, i gotta finish cleaning, first. then the update post....after i sleep, probably. i didn't think this would take all night...

ok, so now cubase is crashing instead of the pc.

that's major progress, actually - and demonstrates the point, a little.

that was enough to get me through the script, anyways.

i may have to revisit this afterwards, but let's just finish the update post, first.

so, let me take note of this - i want to revisit the deletion part of the script. while i seem to be stuck with some kind of process running in the background that i can't turn off (something i've noticed on my other machines, as well), i am not technically connected to the internet with this machine anymore (the nic is disabled in the bios) and don't need the kind of scripting i was running previously to avoid spyware intrusions. so, i can turn off most of the script as a troubleshooting step and turn it back on, incrementally, as i stabilize the system.

ok, no, it just did the same thing it was doing. ugh.

let me try it with the mixer running and see if it helps.

(these notes will be useful to me in the future)

ok, so i was able to get the program to launch.

i was installing the copy protection software, then cubase sx 3 and then an update to it. this time, i skipped the cubase sx 3 install and just installed the update. it seems to have produced a stable install, but the asio driver won't load.

so, i'm reinstalling the alesis asio drivers and....

no.

let me try with the m-audio asio drivers..

yes. hrmmn.

so, let me try the alesis again...

yes. 

weird.

ok. 

one more reboot, then.

we'll have to test it when i finish the update post, i just wanted to get through the script. if that stabilizes, then maybe i need to alter the cubase install process.

there's been two repeated scenarios where the machine freezes:

1) the cubase issue, which looks like ram on first glance, but i think probably isn't. i mean, either all the ram is bad or none of it is. and it's probably not that all of it is.

2) when i search on one of the larger drives, which i think is an xp issue. again - that looks like ram, but i can't figure it which stick is bad, if it is.

it sounds crazy, but i'm guessing it's probably more along the lines of that i'm freezing the logger when i use too many resources. essentially, i'm crashing the software they're using to spy on me, which seems to be running at the firmware level.

yes, that's insane. but, it's what seems to be true. it is insane, but they're crazy, not me...

i mean, it seems like some piece of hardware is malfunctioning, on first approach.

but, it's not obvious what it is and the more i tease it apart the less likely it seems that that's the case. 

i really think that somebody thinks i'm doing something with this machine that i shouldn't be doing, and it seems like all i can do is wait until they give up, as they're operating on a level that i can only gleam.

it's a recording machine. that is all.

i wish i understood the underlying problem.

but, i set this machine up so that i wouldn't waste time troubleshooting - it's designed to instantly reformat on any kind of problem. and, i'm not going to waste large amounts of time troubleshooting, i'll reformat until it works.

i wonder if the reason it's doing this is because i changed driver signing in the middle of the script.

regardless, i think this is my last try before i format.

ok, i got an error message this time, that's some progress.

....so, i'd might as well try to approach it from a vantage point, and try to get it right, rather than just rush it out to meet demand. there isn't a demand.

some of my favourite pieces took 30 years to write and underwent multiple revisions; this used to be a normal part of the composition process, before music was reduced to a commodity. i know it sounds bizarre to have no interest in being relevant, but that's what music has usually been about - realize the historical weirdness of the current neo-liberal paradigm in art. this isn't how it has ever been before, and it's not how it will be in the future. i'm just stuck in it. unfortunately.

so, yeah - it's going to take me 10-20 years to complete each of these pieces, and i wish other contemporary artists would see their work in this kind of historical context, rather than being obsessed with being a part of the fall's fashion trends.

we're in a bottoming out, in music.

there's no audience.

what's the point?

i'm writing for a post-capitalist future that art exists in, again.

i have no idea why it's not working correctly.

but, i'm going to try to install from a different drive.

yeah, that didn't launch.

let me try one more time before i format/reinstall.

again, the projects i want to be working on right now are the period 3.1 pieces from late 2003 and early 2004 listed at the top of this page:

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/

period 3.2 won't click in until late 2004, but the matlab project won't start until after that, even.

i'm not interested in writing new music until i've completed the old pieces, but my music is not intended to be contemporary, or to comment on current topics. 

when i finish the discography up until 2011, i will need to complete loose ends over the last 10-15 years (or whatever it ends up being) before i look at ideas relevant to then-contemporary concepts.

there is no possibility that i'm going to drop anything and start over, either. and, if this process never completes, so be it.

i don't want to move to the 64 bit system until i start the matlab project.

in fact, i'm intending on doing a lot of period 3.1 on the windows 98 pc, to get a continuity of sound that wasn't desired for the period 1 and 2 stuff.

yes, i'm about to switch over, i just need to finish that update post. i've got a bunch of new relevant gear, and i'm almost ready to restart, i just need to reorder my thoughts. and this constant needless troubleshooting isn't helping.

so, it seems to be the cubase install program that's forcing a reboot in a place i don't remember.

it seems like something is crashing, but i think it's actually hardcoded.

i don't remember it doing that before. but, let's see what happens.

hrmmn.

spoke too soon.

my bios reacted very differently when i cleared it this time than it did previously. it normally defaults to 2000 on the date clear, but it defaulted to 2099 this time. i don't know why.

it's been a while since i flashed it, because it's dangerous. i once had to reprogram the thing using a bus pirate after the flash borked...

i've long suspected that the actual problem with this machine is that somebody (cia. csis. i dunno.) installed a bios virus on it when i wasn't here which included some kind of backdoor to a wireless device locked into the chip and i haven't been able to shake it off. so, what's happening is that the computer is getting shut off remotely and i don't have a way out because i can't get into the board.

so, i'm wondering if this change means that somebody messed with it when i was gone...

i don't know if it's good or bad, but the script completed so let's take it from there.