Help down Under

[b2jgc]

Hi All
New to this site and found some very interesting information so I thought I would share my issues to see if anyone can help.
After nine years of trusty service my 2001 300 Mhz D8B has finally started to show signs of is age. Apart from a dodgy ch 1mic input and ch 13 jumpy fader it does all still work very well.
However boot up has become very interesting, no Led’s on ch 18-24 and a howling sound on the master until its turned down and then this stops. The Led’s on ch 18-24/ 48 all disco and some of the master section Led’s join the party as well which leads me to think I have the Railcap problem, then after 5 minutes all settles down apart from the ch 18 Led. The desk then works ok for a few hours.
I am guessing after nine years it need a service but, I live in Sydney Aus and there does not appear to be any service centre, questions.
1. does this sound like the railcap problem or a dodgy connection
2. Anyone know which caps might be the problem
3. Where can I get spares
4. Mackie service (Sydney) Australia ?

Any Help is much appreciated
Jon

[anyhorizon]

The rail cap problem doesn't generally occur with consoles that were manufactured at the same time as the 300 MHz CPUs. That being said, if you bought your machine 2nd hand, some switcheroos could have taken place. The symptoms you describe are some of those associated with the rail cap problem.

Some things to do prior to travelling that road are:

Disconnect and reseat the big round connector making sure that it "clicks" on the last turn.

Reseat the Data Cable at the console and CPU ends.

Clean and reseat the 4 ribbon cables' connectors and receptacles associated with the power distribution board, seen top left in this photo:



Also clean and reseat those cables' destinations.

For rail cap information, if it takes you that far, see rail cap failure and rail cap identification

Peter

[b2jgc]

Hi Peter

Thanks for the info,

The Board and CPU are both 2001, Ill check the connections etc and let you know if that fixes the problems,

Thanks again for the reply

Jon