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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

RED ROCKET CARD DYING AFTER UPGRADE

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Brian Timmons said:
Before this thread gets closed can we from now on post with the intent of working toward
a decent solution to this problem.

RED has a history of strongly supporting it's users yet there does seem to be a real issue going on with the RED ROCKET cards.

Admittedly I'm very hesitant to perform any upgrade because I simply need the card and it will REALLY hurt to have to produce
the mentioned repair cost.

I ask that there be a more structured dialog particularly between RED tech support and RED ROCKET owners who have experienced this problem so a fix can
be found.

The cards obviously are workhorses but they may not be perfect.
If there is indeed some sort of issue hardware or software let's deal with it with the intent of getting solved.
The card is way too important to the workflow for the anger confusion to reign.

Structured communication helps.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA
Click to expand...
 
Did anyone here actually read my post and the solution i was given that worked?

Someone close this thread as it has turned to shit and I regret starting it.

Next time i will be patient and wait for a response from RED
 
Am I missing something here... Isn't this thread based on one person posting a problem then many people reporting similar problems with the only resolve being a complete replacement of the card so other people bringing an issue to the surface?

Why is there talk of closing this thread?
What am I missing?
 
On the 4th page of this thread Adam Eden posted that his original problem was solved. I think he meant since his problem was solved this thread should be closed. However, there are others posting with similar problems but that didn't have the same success as Adam. I think this resumes this thread, basically.
 
Cool, I just re-read the complete thread.

Why is there talk of someone deleting posts?
Could the person deleting posts please step up and say why posts were deleted.
 
Adam Eden said:
Did anyone here actually read my post and the solution i was given that worked?

Someone close this thread as it has turned to shit and I regret starting it.

Next time i will be patient and wait for a response from RED
Click to expand...

Yes Adam I did read your post and solution. The same solution was suggested to me and fortunately for you and unfortunately for me it resolved the problem. No need to close this thread nor be impatient. It is good to share information even if this can illicit less than helpful "noise". From my experience there is always helpful/interesting information buried somewhere.

In regards to some of the above posts I believe it is easy to get carried away. When Brent states

Brent@RED said:
[...] The incident report and repair tickets on the Rocket is an extremely low percentage of the total number of Rockets out in the wild.

BC
Click to expand...

I have no reason to doubt him. If one looks at it in perspective there is no reason to claim that Red's policy is unfair, misleading or overpriced. I knew the card was sold with a 1 year warranty and to be completely honest the card has along with my system been through some pretty grueling shots with locations uniquely unsuited for delicate computer gear. While the cost is high it is not unreasonably so considering the OEM cost of the Atomix card + development costs of the custom firmware + normal profit margin. I am assuming that the $3000 cost is close to cost for Red. Furthermore, Red has most likely sold many thousands of RR cards and if there was a wide-spread and frequent occurrence of problems with RR cards, I am sure there would be a constant clamor about it on these boards. That it springs up from time to time shows that, yes, it does happen, but in actual fact is quite rare.

That I personally was one of the few that got burned sucks for me and I am not a rich man. It would be very nice to have that $3000 in my pocket (to buy more Red goodies with) but I do make my living using Red's products and overall my experience with Red as a company has been pretty much only positive. My MX camera has been bullet proof for over 3 years and that includes cables, hard drives etc. Living on the bleeding edge of technology has a cost and I chalked up my loss as a business expense and have moved on. Would I be reluctant to buy another RR card? Not even for second.
 
Brian Timmons said:
I ask that there be a more structured dialog particularly between RED tech support and RED ROCKET owners who have experienced this problem so a fix can
be found.

...

Structured communication helps.
Click to expand...

Brian, the structured communication involves an owner with an issue sending a support ticket to tech support and working directly with RED. Yes, REDUSER is great for community support and for us at RED to see trends, suggestions, etc - but the quickest path to direct resolution is communication between RED and its customers.

And as N_Villers posted, when some people post that there are issues with the Rocket, it is human nature to think that the issue is bigger than it is. That whole "bad news travels faster than good news" thing. But, when we see a trend of people saying they have an issue, we certainly look into it. That is why I posted yesterday that our tech support and engineering teams have tracked this thread. I know some of the people who have posted on this thread also submitted support tickets and have been in communication with RED tech support. We listen to honest feedback and constructive criticism. Accusations, assumptions, and blanket statements - makes it tough. We can understand frustration. We just ask that you work WITH us, and not AGAINST us.

BC
 
As Brent has said we are looking at this report and seeing what's going on. There is NO WAY for a firmware upgrade to brick your card, that's the whole reason for the fail-safe option to be there. If the card is not showing up or won't open (but you do see it in Device Manager / System Info) then something else is going on that we need to evaluate.

If you're having issues with your card please contact our support department so we can 1) walk you through this fail-safe procedure and if needed 2) take the card in to get it tested.

As always we are constantly evaluating our products and customer service.

Thanks!
 
I'm fairly new to this forum and I have seen amazing things!! That being said, I can guarantee that each person who Is having a problem with there RR and have stated it on this forum have also praised Red for everything they have gotten from the company. Unfortunately the bad always stands out more than the good. It's not a good feeling going on a job and wondering (what if) with your RR. I'm glad this problem Is being addressed considering there are so many with the same problem..( And yes we have had the exact same problem)
 
My card was sent back to Red and tested and they couldn't tell me why it didn't work. If I knew why it stopped working I could take steps to not do that again. Not knowing why the card worked Sunday night and did not work Monday morning in a new system is really frustrating.

Having a Rocket is SUPER AWESOME! I can't live without it on a Red job.


Dusty
 
Dustin Cross said:
My card was sent back to Red and tested and they couldn't tell me why it didn't work. If I knew why it stopped working I could take steps to not do that again. Not knowing why the card worked Sunday night and did not work Monday morning in a new system is really frustrating.

Having a Rocket is SUPER AWESOME! I can't live without it on a Red job.Dusty
Click to expand...

You probably blew the card up from static electricity when moving the card, or whats more common as per me previous posts, there was still residual current running in the machine you pulled the card from or residual current in the machine you inserted the card into.

I was a broadcast engineer for over 15years and I used to build and service Avid's. In the original Avid's they used the Truevision Targa 2000 pro cards and they were very sensitive to being removed and inserted into computers and would die for apparently no reason.

This never happened to me, but we I quizzed my clients about the cards blowing up they usually pulled the power cord out of the machine and removed the card straight away, or even worse they would insert a card into a machine that was just turned off.

My rocket card is in a HP 4000 box and I have measured the time it takes for the power to fully dissipate from the box and believe me it takes just under 3 minutes to get a 0 volt reading.
Also i highly suggest putting a UPS system on your computer as the average computer has a pretty shitty power supply and this can be another reason that the card is blowing up as you can get a power spike that will also blow up your card.

A cheap UPS is about $100

Targa cards could never be repaired either and were $15K at the time so I would get my clients to get the cards insured for power spikes which a lot of home insurance policies will cover if you note the card on your policy. The only problem with this method is that the card has to be reported to have FUSION damage from a technician. The card will not be covered under insurance from normal wear and tear. In Australia if your fridge motor blows up in an electrical storm, that is normally FUSION damage so check that out with your home and contents insurer.
 
Rob Lohman said:
There is NO WAY for a firmware upgrade to brick your card, that's the whole reason for the fail-safe option to be there. If the card is not showing up or won't open (but you do see it in Device Manager / System Info) then something else is going on that we need to evaluate.
Click to expand...


That is the best news I have heard all day! Thank god for the failsafe as it saved me!

I have seen on some cards such as SCSI cards, that a bad firmware install can kill a card.
 
I just wanted to state again that I appeciate what RED is doing to solve this.

In our case (which may be different than others), our RR was working fine, never moved into another system (until later on, for trouble shooting). We had just upgraded the firmware, and then it started disappearing from the system profiler intermittently on boot up. And when it DID show up, the system complained that the card was not running fast enough for the slot it was in, despite using the Expansion Utility to ensure proper bandwidth.

After opening a support ticket, we tried the #8 dip switch reset, older firmware, (safely) moving the RR into a different system and different slots.

When I saw this thread, I wanted to add our experiences to help others trouble shoot and to see if there were similar cases.

Thanks again, RED, for working to resolve this... and for looking into alternative ways of supporting RR in the future.
 
Adam Eden said:
You probably blew the card up from static electricity when moving the card, or whats more common as per me previous posts, there was still residual current running in the machine you pulled the card from or residual current in the machine you inserted the card into.

I was a broadcast engineer for over 15years and I used to build and service Avid's. In the original Avid's they used the Truevision Targa 2000 pro cards and they were very sensitive to being removed and inserted into computers and would die for apparently no reason.

This never happened to me, but we I quizzed my clients about the cards blowing up they usually pulled the power cord out of the machine and removed the card straight away, or even worse they would insert a card into a machine that was just turned off.

My rocket card is in a HP 4000 box and I have measured the time it takes for the power to fully dissipate from the box and believe me it takes just under 3 minutes to get a 0 volt reading.
Also i highly suggest putting a UPS system on your computer as the average computer has a pretty shitty power supply and this can be another reason that the card is blowing up as you can get a power spike that will also blow up your card.

A cheap UPS is about $100

Targa cards could never be repaired either and were $15K at the time so I would get my clients to get the cards insured for power spikes which a lot of home insurance policies will cover if you note the card on your policy. The only problem with this method is that the card has to be reported to have FUSION damage from a technician. The card will not be covered under insurance from normal wear and tear. In Australia if your fridge motor blows up in an electrical storm, that is normally FUSION damage so check that out with your home and contents insurer.
Click to expand...

Adam,

The rocket came out of a system that had been sitting over night and went into a system that had just been delivered that morning. Neither system had been power up for several hours. So I don't think it was residual current.

Static electricity to the card maybe, but I always ground myself before touching cards.

The system the card came out of was using a UPS the previous day when the card was working. The system the card went into was also using an UPS after the card was installed.

The new system had never had a Rocket in it, so the only thing that was done was the Rocket software was installed and the firmware upgraded.

I have no idea why the card died and Red could not tell my why the card was not working. It worked Sunday. Then was put in a new system Monday and it did not work.

In almost 20 years computer hardware experience, I have never had a card die simply from moving from one system to another. I don't know why the card died. I don't know that the firmware had anything to do with it. The firmware install process worked correctly. After the problems I could roll back the firmware. Different versions of the firmware allowed the card to do different things. Maybe the card just got worn out from too much use. Lots of 12+ hour days it heat. I don't know and Red didn't either after they tested the card.


Dusty
 
In my case I had a card sitting in a tower for over a month connected to a ups. The problem started when files that were exported had very pyschadelic moving color patterns appeared over half of the picture. I will dig around for a still tommorow. My thought was that I should reinstall the drivers and flash the firmware but on restart the card dissapeared from my system never to reappear again.
 
I had the exact same problem with the psychedelic patterns. The card kind of went back and forth after that
but eventually died.



N_Villers said:
In my case I had a card sitting in a tower for over a month connected to a ups. The problem started when files that were exported had very pyschadelic moving color patterns appeared over half of the picture. I will dig around for a still tommorow. My thought was that I should reinstall the drivers and flash the firmware but on restart the card dissapeared from my system never to reappear again.
Click to expand...
 
mine never left the computer from the day it was installed...and computer had a fricken padlock on it!!! As if it needed it as i primarily use it for myself to understand the workflow and it worked for 12months and 1 week. Upgraded firmware it no longer had RR activity...Now i have sorted this situation with RED but am mearly supporting those others that has had this happen and RED for that matter in letting us all know what happen to me. If this is indeed a Dvs product then perhaps a redisign is in order. And im voting for a 3 year warranty on anything that has nearly a 5000.00 price tag. I have other computers that have had quadra 4800 in then for as long without a single problem...
 
In the spirit of balance I have had an original Red Rocket that has worked flawlessly for 2 1/2 years. I have moved it in and out of several computers and used it heavily, taking it through what seems like a dozen firmware upgrades.

No doubt the issues described by users are real, but let's keep things in perspective.

Having said that, Rocket Armour would be a fantastic thing for peace of mind!
 
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