Hi there, I would like to get to the bottom of this PARSE ERROR.
What is this file /bank16.work’ (‘PARSE ERROR’)
and how come its missing, I haven’t touched anything, didn’t delete files, this problem just popped up.
Thanks
Update: I put the OT in the disk mode and replaced the bank16.work and bank16.strd files from another project (I had nothing going on in that bank) and it restored the project without giving any errors at loading.
Try ‘save to new’ and then load that project.
Worked for me. Once I just had to reload the project and that fixed the problem.
Thanks for the tip. In the meantime, I put the OT in the disk mode and replaced the bank16.work and bank16.strd files from another project (I had nothing going on in that bank) and it worked.
When I had issues like that it was bad sectors on my CF card. Regular formatting in the Octatrack or on a computer didn’t solve it, but a low-level format with a dedicated program solved it and I haven’t had an issue in three years.
In my case, I had to drive 80 miles in a bad cold snap with the Octatrack in its case in the trunk and after that I was getting parse errors but also having a weirder issue where settings would change, like the data was getting messed up on the card but the OT could still read it. Mostly my record settings would get mixed up in weird ways and if I fixed them, saved, power-cycled and reloaded they’d be different again. Occasional track data moved to different tracks. One of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen happen to digital files.
Anyway, the low-level format did it. I ended up having to try two or three free tools before I found one that would complete the format without freezing and I don’t remember which one it was. might have been this:
http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/
Oh dear, what a nightmare, that CF card wasn’t your pal at all. I can’t imagine the amount of troubleshooting you must have done in the dark trying to isolate the matter.
Kudos for reforming and still using that bad boy.
I would have never suspected the card. I will look out for anomalies. Thanks for sharing your experience.
The *.work files contain the current/temporary state of the project (in this case pattern bank 16). For each of the *.work files there exists also a *.strd file which contains corresponding “save state”.
Since I wasn’t in this situation before, I’m not sure how the OT behaves by itself, but manual project recovery may also be possible by replacing the invalid file with its other variant (*.work or *.strd depending which one gots corrupted). Of course, this doesn’t guarantee a full recovery when the current state and the save state already differs.
About why this may have happened:
My first guess wouldn’t be a bad card/bad sectors. It’s much more likely that you turned the OT off before it had completely finished writing the current state files to the CF card.
Before turning the OT off always watch the card status led careful for inactivity.
Good point.