TINA/Spice: Transient sim causes PC to turn off under Windows 10 .

Steve Green

Other Parts Discussed in Thread: TINA-TI

Tool/software: TINA-TI or Spice Models

I have a rather large circuit running a transient sim. It takes 4 or 5 hr on my old XP laptop at work so I tried running on my home PC, AMD quad core with windows 10 64 bit. At about 5% into sim the PC shuts down. No error messages, no blue screen, just turns off power.

over 7 years ago

0 Nikhil Gupta (Product Folder Models) over 7 years ago

TI__Mastermind 39210 points

Steve,

That is a very odd problem. Can you share your TSC file, so we can check on a few systems (though I doubt we can get the exact configuration that you have).

0 Steve Green over 7 years ago in reply to Nikhil Gupta (Product Folder Models)

Intellectual 430 points

I uploaded file to you. Let me know if you don't get it.

Steve

0 JC Zhu over 7 years ago in reply to Steve Green

TI__Mastermind 37200 points

Hi Steve,

Does it do this every time you run this circuit?

Thanks,
JC

0 Steve Green over 7 years ago in reply to JC Zhu

Intellectual 430 points

I tried twice, shut down both times. BTW, version 9.3.50.40 SF-TI running as admin.

Steve

0 John Miller - Sensing over 7 years ago in reply to Steve Green

TI__Mastermind 40295 points

Steve,

I saw similar behavior in my home computer, a desktop machine.
It wasn't running Win10 or TINA, but it would run for a while and abruptly power off.
No warnings, no windows messages and no blue screen. It would abruptly shut down.

It turned out that the internal power supply was getting weak and it would overheat and shut down the system.
In my case it didn't need a larger-than-normal computing load, it just needed time to eventually warm up until a temp sensor tripped.

Switching out the power supply fixed the problem and the computer served me well for a long time after that.

That may not be the problem you are seeing, but if you have a different, computationally intensive program you can run it might help pin down the root cause.

Regards,
John

0 Steve Green over 7 years ago in reply to John Miller - Sensing

Intellectual 430 points

Thanks John,

I will look into that. I had a newer supply, but swapped it out with my son's PC when he updated his system to a quad core with high power video (he's a gamer). He needed newer supply cabling for his system. This supply has been OK since I use on board video and only have 2 hard drives and a DVD drive. Also, This PC is seldom shut down, runs 24/7.

Update: I found I had not updated TINA on this PC so I downloaded the latest version. It got to 15 % before it shut down.

Thanks all

Steve

0 Steve Green over 7 years ago in reply to Steve Green

Intellectual 430 points

Hi John,

That was the key. I ran Prime95 and the system turned off after ~2 min. Took the PC apart and cleaned and found that the heatsink compound had completely dried out. Cleaned processor and heatsink, reapplied compound and reassembled. Ran Prime 95 for over 20 min with no problem. Installed a temperature monitor and stayed under 50 C. Reran my sim and ran until I had a 0 current fault in an opamp. So it looks like I'm in business. How if I can find why I get that error!

Anybody have suggestion on that? Sometimes reducing some internal signal levels helps, but don't know why.

Thanks all,

Steve

0 John Miller - Sensing over 7 years ago in reply to Steve Green

TI__Mastermind 40295 points

Steve,

Glad to hear the first issue was resolved.
To identify the fault, we will need to run sims of the circuit having problems.

The easiest was to do that is for you to post your circuit file to this thread. using the paperclip icon above.

If you are not okay with that, there are other options.

Regards,
John

0 Steve Green over 7 years ago in reply to John Miller - Sensing

Intellectual 430 points

Attached is file. I change pot positions and input signal levels for different trials. Trying to optimize circuit for low level inputs. Sometimes runs, sometimes faults out with same error.

Rcvr 1 channel Z.TSC

0 John Miller - Sensing over 7 years ago in reply to Steve Green

TI__Mastermind 40295 points

Steve,
The circuit ran okay w/o any changes, but it did take a l-o-n-g time to complete.
The transient analysis option was Calculate Operating Point.

Changing the option to Zero Initial Values sped things up quite a bit, and the sim finished successfully.
The down side is that it can take a while for start-up transients to settle out. In this case, it looks like the output VM10 takes about 2.5ms of sim time before there is agreement between the two options.

If you continue to have problems with your circuit, please let me know and we can look into tweaking the sim analysis parameters to help convergence.
Regards,
John

0 Steve Green over 7 years ago in reply to John Miller - Sensing

Intellectual 430 points

Hi John,
I guest I sent one that did run. I will send one that I know faults out later today.
Steve

0 Steve Green over 7 years ago in reply to Steve Green

Intellectual 430 points

Hi John,

The sims have been running better with the zero initial conditions. I just had on fault out though. I am attaching that one.

Thanks0753.Rcvr 1 channel Z.TSC

Steve

0 John Miller - Sensing over 7 years ago in reply to Steve Green

TI__Mastermind 40295 points

Steve,

Your latest circuit seemed to run fine for me. No errors.

Regards,
John

0 Steve Green over 7 years ago in reply to John Miller - Sensing

Intellectual 430 points

Thanks John,

I will keep trying veriations.

Steve

0 Steve Green over 7 years ago in reply to Steve Green

Intellectual 430 points

Hi John,

This sim had a convergence3480.Rcvr 1 channel Z.TSC fault at 61%.

Thanks,

Steve

0 John Miller - Sensing over 7 years ago in reply to Steve Green

TI__Mastermind 40295 points

Steve,

The latest schematic seemed to run fine on my machine without any errors.
The plots appear below.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Regards,
John

https://e2e.ti.com/cfs-file/__key/communityserver-discussions-components-files/234/1057.tinadiag.emf

0 Steve Green over 7 years ago in reply to John Miller - Sensing

Intellectual 430 points

Hi John,

The same file ran on my home PC as well. I need to check, I may not have the latest version on my laptop. Another thought, my laptop is an older 32 bit machine, my home PC a 64 bit.

Thanks for all the help. I should be OK now.

Steve

0 John Miller - Sensing over 7 years ago in reply to Steve Green

TI__Mastermind 40295 points

Steve,

Thanks for info.

Let me know if you have any more questions or concerns.

Regards,
John

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TINA/Spice: Transient sim causes PC to turn off under Windows 10 .