pa900 locking up with several notes playing on one key

Discussion relating to the Korg Pa900 and Pa3X Le Arranger.

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rbwright
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Location: merced ca

pa900 locking up with several notes playing on one key

Post by rbwright »

What is the permanent fix for this $3000 dust collector? I've already installed version 1.3
Cannot use live anymore..can't afford a new roland
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voip
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Post by voip »

Welcome to the forum.

There is a PA900 section where this question might be better asked.

Does the stuck note issue occur when everything has been disconnected, apart from power and headphones? Does it happen with all sounds?

.
rbwright
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Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2018 8:52 pm
Location: merced ca

Post by rbwright »

It does it plugged into the pa system, and just thru the onboard speakers during practice. I used to be able to press shift.end and go on, but now it Will even reboot in this condition. It
Is an intermittent issue increasing in frequency.
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musiccankill
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Post by musiccankill »

This seems like a hardware problem rather than a software one...
Can you record a video of it getting stuck (with sound) so we can say something maybe more specific?
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nitecrawler
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Post by nitecrawler »

Do you have good power going into the instrument at your location? Are any other electrical devices suffering weird operations? Are you under warranty? If under warranty, document occurrences and get it checked out. Good luck!
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musiccankill
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Post by musiccankill »

Well the psu inside pa900 (and most others) is a switching mode power supply which means that is ll run with at least anything between 90 and 250 volts..
I highly doubt it is the input power the problem..
It could be the psu itself having not stable voltage output but this is a hardware fault too and needs the keyboard to get disassembled..
rbwright
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Location: merced ca

Post by rbwright »

I use a power conditioner, and have had it for a couple of years now. No warranty hopes. I see many posts on this issue, hard to believe it's hardware. My old i5s still works perfectly, that's why I bought another korg. I can't express my disappointment. I buy the power supply as it did it once in a while when new, I dismissed as firmware. Now it's too undependable to play live, and even fails in my studio now. The main problem is I love this board.
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musiccankill
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Post by musiccankill »

Have you tried factory restore and play with only the factory styles (don't load any set) to check if it ll do it again?
rbwright
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Location: merced ca

Post by rbwright »

Great idea . I'll look up the process and try tonite!
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rbwright
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Post by rbwright »

Tried factory reset and it locked up 2 times in 5 min.
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alfredokiwi
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Post by alfredokiwi »

rbwright wrote:What is the permanent fix for this $3000 dust collector? I've already installed version 1.3
Cannot use live anymore..can't afford a new roland
rbwright wrote:Tried factory reset and it locked up 2 times in 5 min.
It seems that there are CPU chips from Texas Instruments that fail after a period of time (turn on time issue). This happens because the quality of the silicon differs from CPU to CPU. Some CPU units are unstable but other are stable so depending of the lot of production and quality of the CPU some units can have sporadic issues and OS crashes. Because the CPU chips are entry level ARM/DSP for cheap tablets and smartphones the production quality differs is like a lottery to match a good unit.

If the failure repeats a Pa900 mainboard replacement is the only solution on such cases. Fortunately I pay for my Pa3XLe half of the price... for a dust collector in the near future...
Last edited by alfredokiwi on Sun Sep 09, 2018 1:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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musiccankill
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Post by musiccankill »

alfredokiwi wrote:
rbwright wrote:What is the permanent fix for this $3000 dust collector? I've already installed version 1.3
Cannot use live anymore..can't afford a new roland
rbwright wrote:Tried factory reset and it locked up 2 times in 5 min.
It seems that there are CPU chips from Texas Instruments that fail after a period of time (turn on time issue). This happens because the quality of the silicon differs from CPU to CPU. Some CPU units are unstable this is caused by the temperature rise after turning on, but other are stable so depending of the lot of production and quality of the CPU some units can have sporadic issues and OS crashes. Because the CPU chips are entry level ARM/DSP for cheap tablets and smartphones the production quality differs is like a lottery to match a good unit.

If the failure repeats a Pa900 mainboard replacement is the only solution on such cases. Fortunately I pay for my Pa3XLe half of the price... for a dust collector in the near future...
Have you ever thought that maybe the problem is the onboard emmc and not the cpu that you keep accusing without any proof?
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Post by alfredokiwi »

musiccankill wrote:
alfredokiwi wrote:
rbwright wrote:What is the permanent fix for this $3000 dust collector? I've already installed version 1.3
Cannot use live anymore..can't afford a new roland
rbwright wrote:Tried factory reset and it locked up 2 times in 5 min.
It seems that there are CPU chips from Texas Instruments that fail after a period of time (turn on time issue). This happens because the quality of the silicon differs from CPU to CPU. Some CPU units are unstable this is caused by the temperature rise after turning on, but other are stable so depending of the lot of production and quality of the CPU some units can have sporadic issues and OS crashes. Because the CPU chips are entry level ARM/DSP for cheap tablets and smartphones the production quality differs is like a lottery to match a good unit.

If the failure repeats a Pa900 mainboard replacement is the only solution on such cases. Fortunately I pay for my Pa3XLe half of the price... for a dust collector in the near future...
Have you ever thought that maybe the problem is the onboard emmc and not the cpu that you keep accusing without any proof?
The Pa series use the same 15 volts 4 amps PSU on all models if problems are on main power regulation the power amplifier would fail first with audio cuts fluctuations on volume and distortion. A simple test is to put Pa900 a maximal volume and check if audio distorts on speakers.

Unfortunately is the CPU board the problem it hangs after 5 minutes. A tablet smartphone CPU like Raspberry Pi have a short lifetime they are very cheap, is not the same quality as PC processors. Is not a matter if CPU or emmc memory is the culprit. Cheap devices means poor silicon chip quality like tablets and smartphones they have a short lifetime.
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musiccankill
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Post by musiccankill »

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about...
Having a problem with your pa3xle doesn't mean all others have the same problem as you...There are no indications about problems in cpu board or anything (not even touch panel) as often as older pa800 model which suffered from cpu board problems and 90% (if not more) of them have got a new cpu board or got their old cpu board repaired (you can see the posts in the pa800 section here too)...
I have only seen 1 pa900 cpu board to fail which was the users fault as he never updated the operating system and left it to version 1.00 which had as far as i managed to see (cause there is no v1.00 pkg to double check it) emmc trim management disabled which caused the emmc to fail as it wrote over the same place (page in memory) too many times and gone to end of life (all flash type memories work like that)...
These instruments are pretty well built and designed..Heat doesn't seem to be a problem too (if you touch a pa800 after being powered on for 4-5 hours you will understand what i mean).
As i saw in your facebook page you seem to be designing embedded systems and repairing keyboards so it will be too easy for you to fix it if it ever gets faulty.
I'd suggest that you should play with it rather than thinking what could go wrong , as thats what it is built for...
As for the harmonizer , call it a bug and get an outboard real tc-helicon which is far better than any wannabe tc-helicon on board...
alfredokiwi
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Post by alfredokiwi »

musiccankill wrote:You obviously have no idea what you are talking about...
Having a problem with your pa3xle doesn't mean all others have the same problem as you...There are no indications about problems in cpu board or anything (not even touch panel) as often as older pa800 model which suffered from cpu board problems and 90% (if not more) of them have got a new cpu board or got their old cpu board repaired (you can see the posts in the pa800 section here too)...
I have only seen 1 pa900 cpu board to fail which was the users fault as he never updated the operating system and left it to version 1.00 which had as far as i managed to see (cause there is no v1.00 pkg to double check it) emmc trim management disabled which caused the emmc to fail as it wrote over the same place (page in memory) too many times and gone to end of life (all flash type memories work like that)...
These instruments are pretty well built and designed..Heat doesn't seem to be a problem too (if you touch a pa800 after being powered on for 4-5 hours you will understand what i mean).
As i saw in your facebook page you seem to be designing embedded systems and repairing keyboards so it will be too easy for you to fix it if it ever gets faulty.
I'd suggest that you should play with it rather than thinking what could go wrong , as thats what it is built for...
As for the harmonizer , call it a bug and get an outboard real tc-helicon which is far better than any wannabe tc-helicon on board...
There are a lot of users with problems on flagship models like Kronos one of them in only 8 months started to fail. Another Kronos with issues and was repaired now had issues on keybed scanning because the firmware goes corrupt on Korg boards despite the garbage collector on emmc it will not last due the crap quality of the silicon chip on ARM CPUs and memories. Cheap devices like ARM/CPU 10 dollars tablet chips are the culprit, is the Chinese low quality low priced electronics inside Korg models what we have. Nice keyboard from outside but a total crap quality the chips inside. I prefer durability.... At the end the user experience judges.
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