d8b Forum

Everything's ok now but yesterday after about ten minutes the meters froze, transport still works, switching from tape to line banks show the meters in the same place. After re-booting the same thing happened, on the third boot everything was fine, so, I'm just curious if anyone else has had this happen?

If it happens again, look and see if you have the alternating ?/* in the VFD to see if you have lost clocking. It sounds like a clocking issue or maybe an odd RAM issue. Those are the first things I would check.

Two possibilities Crash, would the meters actually freeze with a Clock disconnection, I know the sound would.

Same thing happened again today, the clock is locked when this happens.

I changed the Ram and cleaned all the connectors, when I boot I get audio, for a short time and, this time the VU's don't freeze, but everything goes black, no VU's showing and no sound?

I checked the connections again in the CPU, I still get audio for five minutes then the freeze, if I reboot I get the same thing.

Everything else works, but when I put a formatted stick in the Floppy simulator, I get, "Please insert a formatted disk"? So at the moment I can't copy projects to load on another CPU,

I have an Idea of replacing the HD in this problem CPU and installing it into another CPU/D8b, that way all the files will be intact and also V5.1, is that logical?

Or...If I copy the project files from the problem CPU HD could they be pasted to a stick and install them on another CPU with SSD?

Phil

What happens if you just switch CPU's between consoles?

Trying that tonight.

I totally agree, that trying first if the problem moves with the CPU or stays with the desk, would be the best thing to try first, since you have two anyway...

...but about moving project files between the two desks... can't you do that via FTP/Ethernet?

It can be a bit tricky to get that all working - especially if you don't happen to have experience with using an FTP client (I wouldn't know if you do). But IMO, that's the best way to get project files in and out of the D8B. No floppy (or emulators) needed.

If you don't have the D8B's hooked up to a network switch, you can wire them together directly, by using a "Twisted Pair" Network cable (not just a regular network cable - two wires in the cable, need to come out on the other wire's terminal on the other end). A good computer store should still have that, though (or order online).

...although... coming to think of it. I think there's no feature in the Mackie OS/D8B itself, that would let you look to another D8B over the network via FTP.

So, a twisted pair network cable doesn't really make sense to use to connect the two D8B units together (unless it's for cascading the units, to make them switch layers in sync, and for solo buttons to work across both units, etc.).

You'd either have to connect the units to the same network switch your regular computer is connected to, or use a twisted pair cable to connect one D8B at a time to your regular computer. But then you'd have to set up a local network between the two (e.g. 192.168.0.10 and 192.168.0.20 as IPs for the two units, 255.255.255.0 for the Subnet Mask), and then enter the IP for the connected D8B in your FTP client (user "anonymous" and leave the password field blank) to get to the data on that unit.

Since the D8B doesn't really get an auto-assigned IP from a DHCP server as most network devices do nowadays, I think you won't get around configuring a local network between your main computer and each D8B when you want to access them via FTP. I think that's what I did last time I needed to get on there.

Sorry... maybe solving the floppy emulator problem would be simpler after all. I'm just a computer nerd and don't mind fiddling with these sorts of network connections settings/issues.

Btw... if the meters freeze and the floppy emulator stopped working... maybe the BIOS somehow lost it's settings, and the D8B trips over it after a while (e.g. memory latency or similar). Did you happen to check if the BIOS settings are still the way they're supposed to be?

Thanks for the replies.

The BIOS is correct.

The desk works perfectly with another CPU with SSD, so, I've copied the project files from the problem CPU to my Mac, installed a floppy drive emulator to the good CPU, tomorrow, I'll see if I can paste the files via a stick to the good CPU, if that works then I'm up and running again!