solarbird | other reasons to open the case

While I was opening the computer to add glowy bits and more importantly a case fan to support the new graphics card, I noticed the wiring inside was a bit of a mess, and cleaned things up a bit.

While doing that, I noticed that the cable providing extra power to the USB root-hub card I’d previously installed 1) used an utterly unnecessary adaptor, and 2) had a loose piece. As in, one of the wires – the yellow one – was basically just reseting against the connection point, rather than being clamped on properly.

Now, things have been working reasonably well lately, but I have been getting a sudden hard bus error about once a day. Ardour crashes, JACK reports a hard bus error but restarts successfully.

That the yellow pin was just resting against its intended contact might explain that problem. Even if it doesn’t, that’s not okay, so I yanked the adaptor, used one of the extant four-pin power connectors in its place, and went on my merry way.

I have had exactly zero bus errors since making this change.

It’s still too early to claim victory – I’ve had error-free runs before – but it’d be awfully, awfully nice if installing a case fan and glowy lights actually lead to solving a known problem.

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