Still in work limbo, I need to fit this new drive before I can actually work with confidence and efficiency. I'm impressed by Visual Studio 2022. Visual Studio was always one of the best things Microsoft have done (that and the Intellimouse). My VS2013 code compiles without a hitch, and the resulting program seems to be faster (though 50% bigger).
The plastic drive caddy for the new computer arrived, surprisingly, at 12pm, but there were problems. I realised after a few minutes of trying to jam it in that the hard drive is supposed to be mounted upside down; most unusual.
It also won't fit, it really needs to be jammed in. The plastic 'springs', at the back are just too stiff, and I didn't want to force it to click into place. The fact that its upside down means that a normal SATA cable won't fit, you need a relatively rare 45cm 'left angle' cable. I have 6 SATA cables but none would fit, and without the ability to click the caddy into place, I'll not be able to close the case.
So, to try to address the caddy problem I've used a clamp and hairdryer to bend the prongs on the back of the caddy, trying to soften the plastic and bend them inwards. The similar things on my ACER PC worked like a dream, but because they were not as tight could vibrate and buzz so I needed to attach blu-tak to stop it. Ideally, the thing would be engineered well enough to hold snugly but not impossibly tightly. At the moment I can't tell if my bending has had an effect. If I still can't fit the thing I may have to saw the plastic prongs off the back of the caddy to a greater or lesser extent, to effectively customise the shape to fit (somewhat ironically, as this caddy IS designed for this exact case).
The loose power cable which is usefully nearby, did fit - phew (though untested). This is one small mercy.
Other PC niggles:
The PreSonus external USB Sound Interface is working ok, and will survive a sleep and wake, but has now, twice, vanished upon waking, requiring a PC restart (unplugging and re-plugging the USB cable would probably also reset it, this was the case for my old Lexicon Alpha which needed restarting after every sleep. I created a batch command to do this, to re-initialise the device and avoid all of that plugging and unplugging as it was starting to wear out the port and cause crackle).
My first thought that the vanish was connected to me pressing buttons on the interface while the PC was sleeping, as I'd done this when it failed to reappear. I did it again today experimentally and things seemed to work, though. It may be the Windows USB auto-power suspend options, though it's odd if those options are applied while the PC was sleeping (perhaps it can dream).
Turning on the desk lamp could also wake the sleeping PC. The PC and the lamp are power-spike protected and on two different mains plugs. I hypothesize that the lightbulb sends out an EM pulse of some sort, causing the network card to wake the PC. The network card was indeed the cause of the problem, which was fixed when I disabled its ability to wake the computer.
I don't want to do any proper work until the drive is fitted.
I have given some thought on how to upgrade Prometheus for higher quality audio formats. For me, 44100hz 16-bit is good enough (to listen to - I can render out higher even now with relative ease), but I worry that future hardware will stop supporting it because this is the lowest quality some hardware now. Upgrading the playback frequency isn't too difficult. I'd have to resample all samples and modulators from 44100 to the target frequency using the same anti-aliased code I use for sample playback. The plugins may need recompiling too, as 44100 is considered to be 1 second. That's all. Upgrading the bit resolution is easier as everything in the program itself is IEEE Float based like most (all?) DAW software. When things are back to normal, I'll add a few basic defines to prepare for a possible update, but I'd rather not do it. 44100hz 16-bit is big enough - I have 1GB of audio waves in that format, and in terms of sound quality it's enough. Sometimes though, hardware and Windows can force an 'upgrade', so it would be prudent to make some contingency plans.
For my music, Prometheus is everything to me. My 1000+ lifetime song output from the last 20 years are in its format and I don't use any other software. Nobody but myself uses it, and after my death probably nobody will ever use it either, making me an even more unique and eccentric musician. Every sound I make is made by my own software, algorithms, samples - well, except when I record something live from an instrument! but even then the recordings are played back in solely by Prometheus as base waves.
So, the day has been nothing but musing and trying. I feel like a lazy philosopher, a tinkerer - not a working artist. I ache to produce, do. But I must be patient, prepare, plan.
