| dvdwmth |
Just posted this at gainclone.com but everyone seems to be here so I will repost.
I decided id hook my gainclone up to my computer, which I have done before but in a different incarnation, and as soon as I started some music I got the blue screen of death and god awful noise. Now my sound card doesn't work. There are no black marks on the card but my computer crashes whenever I try to use it. Not a great loss because the sound card is old and didn't cost much, but it makes me worried that maybe I'll wreck something else.
So my question is, what mysterious force coming from my amp could cause such a thing? Or is this not possible? Perhaps its a coincidence that this happened just when I decided to hook up the gainclone but I doubt it since I have put many miles on both card and amp without incident. Aside from killing my sound card the amp is well behaved.
My understanding of electronics is between simple and non existant so hopefully what is mysterious to me is obvious to others. If more info will help please ask.
Thanks |
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| Jean |
| There was a post about a portable cd player that started smoking recently . I think you should check for DC voltage at the input of the gc amplifier first. |
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| dvdwmth |
Thanks for the reply.
Just measured. No dc voltage at the inputs. |
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| Tsanford |
Are you using a large enough resistor on the input to ground? I use 20-47k depending on equipment, that resistor sets the input impedance of the amp. Too low an impedance could pull too much current and damage the card.
Another thought, How are you interfacing them? are you sure you haven't grounded the + output of your sound card? If the cable is wired up reversed it would cause a ground fault,I would hope the card would be protected from output to ground shorts tho.
Good luck with it. |
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| carlmart |
Anyone connecting a gainclone, particularly IGCs, to a computer soundcard should put at least 1K in series before the actual amp circuit.
A blocking capacitor is always in order after that resistor.
Carlos |
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| Sjef |
Maybe you should measure the voltage between the ground of your PC and the ground of the amp when they are not connected to each other.
With my old PC there was always a difference of about 70 Volts !!!! (with my new PC there is still about 5 to 10 Volts) Got a shock of it a couple of times. This is a static difference that will dissapear when you connect them to each other but it can realy destroy your hardware during connection.
So always connect when the power is off or use transformers. |
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| dvdwmth |
| quote: | Originally posted by Tsanford
are you sure you haven't grounded the + output of your sound card? If the cable is wired up reversed it would cause a ground fault,I would hope the card would be protected from output to ground shorts tho.
Good luck with it. |
this could be the source of the problem. I managed to get the card to work again, although its quite unstable, and in the process of experimenting reversed the connectors and got the same thing happening that caused the problem the first time. |
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| trigon |
Hi
I have pluged GC with my son's computer and it is working like a charm and BTW I have no input resistors at all.:D
Trigon |
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