d8b Forum

Hey guys,

Ok here goes,

I have wanted a D8B since the early 2000's. Finally bought one along with a non working HD24/96 with 2 monitors, keyboards mouses, all cables, 3 120gb hdd sleds and a firewire hdd sled chassis a few months ago for $700.
The console has 2 MFX and 2 UFX cards, apogee word clock, 3 digital optical cards, the Aes/beu card. Essentially fully loaded with mackie os 5.1. the HD24/96 is the same with the bios upgrade for larger hdd. the main hdd was bad. So after replacing and going through the bone yards trying to find a PC with a floppy drive. I reinstalled the os and its working like clock work. The console on the other hand well..... not so much. It was working beautifully until I accidentally turned on the HD 24/96 and then the D8B the GUI booted and it popped and froze. So I restarted it in the correct order and it was fine for a while. Then out of nowhere in the middle of recording, in the GUI a box popped up asking for the authorization code for the os. I restarted and it came back, restarted again and it went away BUT... Many of the faders were unresponsive in the GUI when moved and vice versa on the desk. I opened the cpu and reseated the cables then did the same to the console. Restarted and it booted fine but now different the faders were unresponsive in a different order and seem to have no motorized function plus all of the v pots were very erratic and jumpy with no real control over them. in the GUI the faders and V-pots were glitching and moving very minutely up and down on their own. I created a new startup mix as well and to no avail, the same thing happened on reboot. I didn't hear any of the intermittent thumping that Ive read about on this forum when pertaining to the rail cap issue. Although I seem to be experiencing some of those same symptoms. I have reseated all of the cables cleaned the brainboard and all connections associated with it and still the same. Can anyone give me a bit of insight as to what may be the underlying issue? I have been reading this forum and obtaining a lot of extremely valuable information. that said I do appreciate ANY help that you can provide and apologize if this has already been discussed and for the long winded post. thank you and blessings to you all!!

First of all, re-seating the connectors is all well and good but if there's just one wire not making contact on the connector spike then reseating doesn't work, on another thread, I had jittering eq, there was one wire not connecting.

What I do is, take a connector off, run your thumb nail (or something similar with no sharp edges) between the ribbon and connector both sides lifting it off the spikes, then put a few drops of circuit cleaner in there and then squeeze the connector back tight on the ribbon with a pliers.

I'm not saying this will cure your problem but at least you know that the connection is ok, the other way to check is with a meter and a probe at each end of the ribbon, don't forget that there are connectors that you can't get to, to reseat.

Thank you for your reply. I cleaned the brain board with baking soda and distilled water dried it in the oven per the instructions on another site for cleaning PCB boards. I disassembled most of the console and reseated any connection that I saw. Would a bad connection also be the culprit in the other issues that I mentioned as well? I'm sorry if I sound like a noob, but indeed I am. I will go through the connections again and clean them with some circuit cleaner and see if that helps. thank you again for your reply. blessings to you!

Cleaning is not good enough if there's a wire in the ribbon not making contact with the spike, check for continuity either end, it takes a while to do with all of them!

in the process of disassembling the whole console and doing as you suggested . wish me luck! thank you again.

I wish you luck, however, this might not be your problem but at least you will have eliminated the ribbons!

I found it easier to get out the long alloy tray that the brain board sits on by removing one side panel.