TC Powercore anything to hope for?

[kingkorg]

Hi guys.
This question is on the edge,  has some potential moral and other issues, but i'll just spit it out.

Lately i've bought two pieces of Powercores in hope that any of them will have Virus plugin licence. One of them is still in trial mode, which is great, the other has trial expired, no licence.

TC has discontinued any support for these, even for those who have all the plugs purchased, licence can not be purchased or transferred. A lot of angry customers left behind.

Trial period is bonded to each hardware unit, and doesn't reset when installed on another system. The hardware itself is dongle.  I guess since all the support is discontinued, TC doesn't want to have anything to do with it apparently, it wouldn't be illegal to kinda find a way to reset trial at least. I understand if my logic is wrong, and we can just forget this topic.

I just wonder if something can be done to hardware unit (i have desktop and firewire) to reset it. I can provide pictures, or even send one to someone willing to work with it (EU based i live in Norway).

There are used ones with licences, but prices are insane for something that doesn't work on most modern systems and uses firewire. I have hardware Virus, but having vst is amazing experience + CL1b which is somehow totally different than native version, and few mastering plugins. 

 

[Rocker6970]

Wow.. I'm not fully up-to-date, so to speak.. :-D    I just have a Powercore and would like to use the Virus VST..
I wonder, how can trial  mode "expire" ??  :-o 
You can use it only for a certain amount of hours (or such) and then it stops working ???  :-/  :-o 

I was (am ??) thinking about buying a Virus (Base) License, but your post actually made me hesitate..  (obviously I don't want to spend, even 20 dollars or such, for something that may not work...)

I guess you (or, shall I say, WE ??   )  may have more traffic if we use https://www.facebook.com/pocoaccessvirus/ , what do you think ? 

My standpoint is that I have this hardware, it would be cool to use it (my soundcard is still firewire, it works, after all)..

Your logic/feel is similar to mine, in relation with the Korg Trinity, by the way. It would be so cool to upgrade its operating system... (or if someone would bring out a Trinity VST, and develop that)..  because the sounds are cool, while there are some shortcomings.. for instance the sound is cut when you change to the next patch or combi. Or, some internal effects are _noisy_ .  :-/      OR if there would be a more recent synth that is upwards compatible with the Trinity. (Or would that be called downwards compatible ? :-D )

If TC would release the source code of this plugin !!! so that it could work _without_ the Powercore hardware.. on any hardware..  and  people could continue the development.. that would be something !

Although I doubt they'd do it.. firstly, why would they want to ?  secondly,  they may have contracts in the background, things we are not aware of.. who knows..
 

 

[mhelin]

Are there  any  3rd party developers that could support developing the plugins or otherwise utilizing the PC resources? Afaik the problem is that the plugins are 32-bit and cannot be run on 64-bit hosts like Cubase Pro. So could for an example Access Music be contacted by those needing future support for their PowerCore devices?

 

[deuce42]

This is totally off topic and I'm not of any help here, but for me personally, TC is one company I will never buy from. The serious design faults of both the Gmajor and then exactly the same complaints and problems with the G Major 2 demonstrated to me TC's complete disinterest in acknowledging their customers frustrations with clear design faults. I just feel its a company that doesnt take accountabiity for their customers.  Do what you gotta do is my position on the matter

 

[gyraf]

TC are a (very local here in Aarhus, I know the guys that started it) distinguished pro audio company that got cooperated and the board found out that there's much more money in consumer goods, cashing in on the brand reputation.

Several times before they just abandoned development of (expensive) software-driven systems. M5000 anyone?

Now they are recently bought up by the "Music Group" - Uli - and even though this may sound like a tragedy, I have hopes for them returning to the "real" pro audio arena in the not too distant future...

Jakob E.

 

[shabtek]

I tried going through official channels to support  a TC product to no avail.-- much run-around/circle-jerking back and forth emails and phone calls to authorized service centers but ultimately reluctance to answer any specific questions and lots of excuses.
Luckily the groupdiy members were able to get me up and running.

Will never purchase TC products again!

 

[kingkorg]

What a product, and what a shame we can't use it in it's full potential.

 

[shabtek]

Is there a writable media device inside that holds the dongle/key?
Maybe it can be cloned fom a working unit— perhaps an internal sd card?

 

[kingkorg]

Guts

 

[kingkorg]

I guess this guy could be the one.

I am a total noob in this area, could i try to read\write to it with one of those chinese tsop programmers?
Or share it's content if anyone is interested in what's on it?

 

[alexc]

Without the software develepment environment and detailed documentation on the programming model used to drive the hardware, the chances of doing anything meaningful with it are slim to completely impossible.

You might be able to dump some hex from rom and whatnot, but how to decode?

If it were a 'known' architecture, maybe you could use a proper disassembling logic probe instrument to give some kind of assembly level code, but again, it's not something you would probably spend the time on.

It would be more cost effective to spend the time on one's regular job, save the cash and get onto the current generation of dsp based audio gear ...  several come to mind ...

But anyway, it's interesting to speculate.

 

[kingkorg]

Get it, thanks.

It's just the Virus that i find precious. Even though i have hardware version, with VST implementation, i found PoCo to be something else and loved simplicity and workflow.

 

[shabtek]

The tc gear i revived had an internal s d card that was corrupt  i was able to  remove and replace with newly cloned one. This powercore challenge is too quixotic for me—

 

[mross]

Maybe this may be of some help:
http://forum.tcelectronic.com/topic/21303/unofficial-powercore-45-beta-72/

Michael

 

[kingkorg]

Thanks man!

The thread you linked, and this one:
http://forum.tcelectronic.com/topic/21062/unofficial-powercore-45-beta-71/page/3/
made me realize what a joke of company policies they have, and how poorly they treat customers.

And this guy Hagen from TC, what a jerk!

They publish unofficial releases on their official forum, say they no longer support the product, but the guy randomly chooses which issues he is willing to address, has a bunch of fan boys who drool over what ever he writes, and praise him for unofficial driver releases which fixes zero issues, he basically says it's better, and along the way his release messes up a lot of devices and licenses out there, and he just says: Well no one forced you to update, this is just beta.

 

[mross]

Thanks man!

The thread you linked, and this one:
http://forum.tcelectronic.com/topic/21062/unofficial-powercore-45-beta-71/page/3/
made me realize what a joke of company policies they have, and how poorly they treat customers.

And this guy Hagen from TC, what a jerk!

They publish unofficial releases on their official forum, say they no longer support the product, but the guy randomly chooses which issues he is willing to address, has a bunch of fan boys who drool over what ever he writes, and praise him for unofficial driver releases which fixes zero issues, he basically says it's better, and along the way his release messes up a lot of devices and licenses out there, and he just says: Well no one forced you to update, this is just beta.

You're welcome!

Michael