so, i'm done the update post up until i started the update post, which was right before i left. in fact, i'm done up to where i left...

i'll need to finish that tonight, after i eat.

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...