urgent advice needed on how too proceed to restore Tane SP3

My Mac Pro self destructed during the process of updating a security patch , graphics card was wrecked. now I have it back ( sans the $400 card , I'll just ordered another 8gb nitro:'( although it at least is now about $100 cheaper ) , it appears that the old high sierra system was deleted and its now on Sierra . TANE which was SP3 is now SP2 and more significantly , all my recent versions of my routes are no longer appearing in the route menu and are not part of the content of this build. my content install I was using is different to the one shown in sp2, which is ipsab5rt1 the one I need is ughifl321, which definitely has the latest stuff ive been working on. I'm in the process of backing up this folder . all 232 gb of it so if the install goes wrong its still all there

My question is, how to proceed ? the backups of all the recent assets and routes are still on the computer up to 3rd jan 2020 when the update plunged me into chaos, , but I'm fearing updating to sp3 and losing them. I have cdps of all the route versions and many of my modified assets, but I don't want to lose any asset reskins by accident as it could take weeks to restore my two routes , any advice on how too proceed from here ? when I update to sp3 is it likely the new assets will be visible as they are in the content folder. i imagine that if i chose the content path to this folder it will allow me to see them all.
, I think I have to upgrade to SP3 as the routes can't be worked on in SP2.is there any way of making the assets into cdps from the backup files ? I think I could install sp3 on another separate drive and then drag and drop content into there ,would that work ?

This isn't as bad as you think.

Go to the Launcher.
Under Trainz settings, you will find the Check for Trainz Updates... button.

You may have to click on Change Trainz update stream... to ensure you are clicking on the correct update and not the beta. In either case, whether you update or not, you will be asked for your loging.

Once that's done, you can the "reconnect" to your ipsab5rt1 folder.

Go to the Launcher again.
Click on Tranz settings.
Click on Install.

The current Local data folder path will be shown in the Local data folder: <space>
Click on the ... on the right.
Browse to the previous folder
Click on Select.

You will see a quick database repair-like message.
You may have to put in your username again, but maybe not if it's the same as before.
You will have to restart.

You should be all set from here.

Note:

You might want to use this as an opportunity to put your ipsab5rt1 folder on another driver if you can. Being a PC guy, I put mine on my E: drive so in case the OS farts up I can always easily reinstall the program and not lose my content.

Hope this helps.

Thanks John, that's what I figured I'd have to do, but after having my computer rendered useless by an update , you can understand that I feel very cautious at the moment, I'm duplicating everything ( I have multiple copies of the routes ) and may wait it until I have at least two copies of everything, even if I have to buy a new 1tb drive to do so.

dangavel said:

Thanks John, that's what I figured I'd have to do, but after having my computer rendered useless by an update , you can understand that I feel very cautious at the moment, I'm duplicating everything ( I have multiple copies of the routes ) and may wait it until I have at least two copies of everything, even if I have to buy a new 1tb drive to do so.

Click to expand...

Very well understood and backups are a good thing. I had a major power supply failure that destroyed my working copies of everything. They were there on the drive, but when I accessed them, they all disappeared and my heart sank to my knees as gulped hard! I have always made backups and had most things I could go back to, even though the backup was a week old and I had to recreate some stuff again. Sadly, however, I did lose some important papers from school and current contacts at the time - stuff I couldn't backup before the inevitable happened.

Good luck with this and please let us know how things go.

Puzzling how a security update could take out a Mac and the GPU, sounds more like a simultaneous event happened, such as a power surge during the update, any lightening happening around that time?

Shouldn't be any issues in pointing to your correct userdata folder after updating, it also appears that for TRS19 you can backport to a lower version, leastwise it worked here on my WIP.

Can you change the location of your userdata folder on a Mac? It's easy on a PC I just put mine in a userdata folder in the main TRS19 folder which I have on a separate drive well away from the OS and in my case Microsoft's interference!

I have double backups of everything on two external drives, only connected when backing up, lost it all at the end of the last century due to a power surge taking out my PC and the backup server I was using, one painful lesson learned.

clam1952 said:

Can you change the location of your userdata folder on a Mac? It's easy on a PC I just put mine in a userdata folder in the main TRS19 folder which I have on a separate drive well away from the OS and in my case Microsoft's interference!

Click to expand...

You can very easily just like a PC but unless you have a Mac Pro you have no enclosure/interface to put the drive in (ie: the popular iMac) so you are talking about an external drive and thus, various IO methods.

clam1952 said:

Puzzling how a security update could take out a Mac and the GPU, sounds more like a simultaneous event happened, such as a power surge during the update, any lightening happening around that time?

Shouldn't be any issues in pointing to your correct userdata folder after updating, it also appears that for TRS19 you can backport to a lower version, leastwise it worked here on my WIP.

Can you change the location of your userdata folder on a Mac? It's easy on a PC I just put mine in a userdata folder in the main TRS19 folder which I have on a separate drive well away from the OS and in my case Microsoft's interference!

I have double backups of everything on two external drives, only connected when backing up, lost it all at the end of the last century due to a power surge taking out my PC and the backup server I was using, one painful lesson learned.

Click to expand...

The Mac itself was ok, apart from reverting to a lower version of the os, losing the card is a blow as it was less than 2 years old, the rx 590 is barely $60 more but it has some driver issues with high sierra so I'm sticking with the older one that I know works , even tho sapphires are pricier than some other versions.

I'm in a rented house so can't run internet cables through roof space and the fibre optic cable is right the other end of it,as a consequence , the wirelsss service is really slow, so using those boosters you plug into the mains and run Ethernet into pc. It seems the unit carked it during the update, even tho the computer is plugged into a surge protected power board .

The funny thing is, apparently these Rx cards are supposed to be fused to protect the components , seems like it failed to do the job. Anyway I seem to have all my assets backed up multiple times already, but done yet another back up just to be careful . I have 32 hard drives( but not all trainz related ) been using hitachi enterprise drives in past five years as they have lowest fail rate , one has to be careful buying tho as often they are resold as new when they previously have been used in commercial servers....seen them on amazon this week , best to avoid the suspiciously cheap ones .....

Likewise renting but a ground floor flat and am restricted in what I can do, luckily for me though, the internet connection is at the rear and in the right place.
I thought most Power supplies these days had builtin basic surge protection? plus all my Asus boards apparently do as well, not sure if it actually works though!

Not sure that those power line adaptors are surge protected in any way, unless plugged into a surge protected socket, so it could have got in via the ethernet port.

Those surge protectors are only good for one hit due to the MOSFET devices inside. They can handle one big surge from the mains, but once hit they become shorted inside are no more than straight wires internally. You are better off getting a UPS such as those made by Tripp-Lite, APS, and some other brand. You need to match the ratings for your total wattage on all your devices you'll plug into the UPS. This would be the VA-rating you see on the power supply, etc.

It sounds to me that your 12V line took the hit and zapped out the video card. The fuses are fuseable links, or fuseable resistors. They're only good for one hit and after that, they have to be cut out and replaced with new ones. So much for longterm protection and an easy fix. To be honest, if that power surge or power supply failure was hard enough to blow the +12V line, you've got a serious problem. It's that kind of surge that killed my PC and bricked my hard drives.

In my case, the power supply fried on the internal side taking out the motherboard, video card, and everything else. I put the hard drives into another computer to read them, and I could read them but the data disappeared as soon as I tried copying it to another device. Poof, gone, all disappeared into bit heaven!

The modern power supplies are all switchers. If they get a large enough input voltage, they will pass it along for at least one cycle. MOV's ultimate failure mode is open circuit, so it is indeed hard to tell if your surge protection is still active in a unit.

JCitron said:

Those surge protectors are only good for one hit due to the MOSFET devices inside. They can handle one big surge from the mains, but once hit they become shorted inside are no more than straight wires internally. You are better off getting a UPS such as those made by Tripp-Lite, APS, and some other brand. You need to match the ratings for your total wattage on all your devices you'll plug into the UPS. This would be the VA-rating you see on the power supply, etc.

It sounds to me that your 12V line took the hit and zapped out the video card. The fuses are fuseable links, or fuseable resistors. They're only good for one hit and after that, they have to be cut out and replaced with new ones. So much for longterm protection and an easy fix. To be honest, if that power surge or power supply failure was hard enough to blow the +12V line, you've got a serious problem. It's that kind of surge that killed my PC and bricked my hard drives.

In my case, the power supply fried on the internal side taking out the motherboard, video card, and everything else. I put the hard drives into another computer to read them, and I could read them but the data disappeared as soon as I tried copying it to another device. Poof, gone, all disappeared into bit heaven!

Click to expand...

Actually don't think it was power surge, the guys at the shop said that the security upgrade was doing this to a lot of units , what may have happened was the unit plugged into the PowerPoint failed, interrupted the download which is firmware and that killed the card, but I wont know what happened ,other then that particular security update is suspect in many ways . ......

dangavel said:

Actually don't think it was power surge, the guys at the shop said that the security upgrade was doing this to a lot of units , what may have happened was the unit plugged into the PowerPoint failed, interrupted the download which is firmware and that killed the card, but I wont know what happened ,other then that particular security update is suspect in many ways . ......

Click to expand...

That's scary! They say not to unplug the power, but if there's a brownout or glitch, you're stuck. I recommend getting a UPS. That has a battery in it that will prevent this kind of thing from occurring in the future.

I had a BIOS update fail due to a pulled power plug that for some reason wasn't completely plugged fully into the back of the computer and decided to unplug at that moment. The BIOS was bricked on the motherboard from that. I contacted the manufacturer and I was told an exorbitant price that was at least three times what I paid when I bought the computer. I ended up replacing the motherboard for 1/10th the cost of the original with a faster board, CPU, and more memory. All the hard drives and video card got moved over, and I used the same case. The computer lived on as a RIP for awhile used to drive an imagesetter then later as a standalone machine running Solaris and Linux because I could.

just to conclude the thread , I installed SP3 and found the right build number data and now all is working well, which is a huge relief .
now to make sure everything is duplicated at least twice ( most stuff was but sometimes I've been a bit slow to make cdp's) and also installed on my windows computer to boot !

This happened to me once before, but i would say for the future to backup the routes with CDP and put it on google drive or something so they won't be lost.

I hope its working fine now!

dangavel said:

just to conclude the thread , I installed SP3 and found the right build number data and now all is working well, which is a huge relief .
now to make sure everything is duplicated at least twice ( most stuff was but sometimes I've been a bit slow to make cdp's) and also installed on my windows computer to boot !

Click to expand...

That's great news. You can rest a little easier now that the stuff is there. Yeah make some backups and multiple places is an excellent idea.