Topic: Trouble with my DR-100mkII

[OldNeumanntapr]

When I got home from taping Tom Russell at the Fremont Theater in SLO last night I popped the digital card into my iMac and noticed that the first set came up as 'zero bytes'. There was nothing there. I checked levels a couple of times and everything looked great. The recorder was running, and it didn't get left on pause. (The red record light was a constant red.) I even tried playing the file on the Tascam. It errors when I try to play that file.

Set two is fine. I shut off the recorder during the intermission to save battery power. I did a 'full format' on the card yesterday before the show. I had some trouble during the Bonnie Raitt set of the recent Avila Blues Festival where there were a couple of places on the recording that sounded like a CD skipping. I thought that maybe the card was getting used too much with only 'quick formats' being done between shows. The other thought I had on that problem was that the internal battery might have been running out of power, but it never did switch over to the AA batteries. (The Bonnie set was the last set of a three-set festival.)

I've noticed that for the past year or so the recorder refuses to turn off when you press the power button when the recorder is running off of battery power. The Tascam logo comes up but the unit stays powered up, no matter how long you hold down the power button. (It doesn't do this if the recorder is being powered by the AC power supply.) So to turn it off I have to remove the card first and then it will power down. That's what I did between sets tonight. Something must have happened during the power down cycle which erased the first set. Or, it never recorded in the first place. I don't understand. It's all very strange. It reminds me of when my D7 would mis load a DAT tape and I would think it was recording fine, only to see that the tape was all wound up in the transport when I tried to eject it later.

I might have caused the problem myself when I powered the unit down during the set break. Maybe I re inserted the card too soon while the unit was powering down. I was doing all of this in the dark with my hand in the bag so I couldn't really see what was going on.

It's never done anything like this before.

Any thoughts oh wise ones?

ONT-

[dallman]

My random thoughts...It sounds like the recorder went from "recording" to no power which would have prevented the save of the data. This has been talked about in a few other threads, usually someone running power but not having batteries in and then losing power. Your scenario is different but the process may have been the same. Unless you are certain the recorder was completely out of "recording mode" and then as a later step you couldn't power down. However even if that were the case, I'd feel pretty certain that somehow you went from the recorder still being in record mode to a no power mode. I am curious if you had thought about removing all the batteries rather than pull the card. Perhaps it wouldnt make a difference, but we are always warned that pulling a card during an operation could damage the card and/or the deck. I think loss of power would be a hair safer.

I have had my Tascam DR100 MKII lock up and not power down, but I always just pulled the batteries, and never lost any data. That said, I think (but who can remember) that I was out of record mode. I always use an external battery on all my recorders always. I always try to have fully charged batteries inside just in case, but I never like to rely on them even if an external battery can be a bit of a hassle at least in a lowpro situation.

I am not sure the best solution, a new card couldn't hurt and according to what youa re saying, an external battery couldn't hurt. There are some pretty small external batteries out there FWIW. Sorry for your loss  It's always a drag when something like this happens.

[OldNeumanntapr]

Thanks for your kind reply. This has never happened to me before, and I was kind of stunned. It's easier to pull the card after the recording because the battery box door is on the other side of the recorder, so when it's in my bag it's almost impossible to get to.

I'm sure I hit the stop button before I ejected the card, but it might not have completed writing the files. I'll be a lot more careful in the future.

Jeff