As hinted at in a few of my responses to other posts, my own D8B is acting up again, lately.
Starting my D8B “cold” after it’s been sitting for some hours, has typically worked well on my D8B (with only occasional “pulsing” issues when turning it on when cold, in the morning).
More recently, though, it started to ALWAYS refuse to start up when “warm.”
If I have to restart the D8B for some reason after it’s been on for even just a few minutes, I ALWAYS have to let it cool down again, or it won’t boot (pulsing meters/faders).
When it’s only been on for a few minutes, it doesn’t take long to let it cool down. But if it’s been on for longer, like a few hours, it won’t cool down enough for maybe another hour or so, before I can try to boot it up again (..and each attempt where it still doesn’t work, will set me back another 10-20 minutes, at least).
…and on days where I decided to make my D8B part of my workflow for some reason, this wastes a lot of my time and I make no progress.
When I first noticed that it started doing this when warm, I still always turned almost everything else in my system on, before I turned on the D8B. Including my Word Clock generator (Lucid GENx192), that the D8B gets its external word clock from. So word clock was always already being sent to the D8B when turning it on.
The database suggests to fully boot the D8B, BEFORE sending external word clock to it… and now I understand why. When trying such a failing “warm” boot, like in the scenario above, the meters on my D8B would pulse and the faders would twitch slightly at the same time.
However, while it’s “pulsing” like that, if I turn the word clock generator off, the pulsing stops.
So, this suggests to me, that the “pulsing” I’m seeing on the meters and faders, is a reflection of the incoming word clock, that the D8B can somehow not process right at that time.
Since then, I kept my word clock generator off, until the D8B is fully booted and I see the blinking questionmark (aka “no clock”). THEN I turn the word clock generator on.
Interestingly, when doing it this way, the meters also no longer “flash” randomly, towards the end of the bootup sequence, just before the mixer is ready to use. Many of them typically “flashed” once very briefly, when reaching that point during booting – but no more, since the word clock generator isn’t on at that point.
Keeping the WC-Generator off, does NOT fix the warm boot situation, though. With it off, instead of seeing pulsing meters and faders, the desk just stays completely dark. The built-in display in the upper right stays dark, and the rude solo light doesn’t come on. (I can turn the pulsing on-and-off in that state, by turning the word clock generator on or off).
Occasionally, during a warm boot with no WC applied, where the display stays off with no rude solo light… both these things suddenly come online, around the time the rack computer monitor has booted to the point where it shows the graphical “D8B 5.1 Real Time Operating System” splash screen. During a “normal” boot, both the display and rude solo light used to come on pretty much immediately, after flicking the power switch to the “on” position. So, now, IF they decide to start working, they do so maybe around 30-40 seconds after flicking the power switch.
But most of the time, they will NOT come on late, but just stay off when the D8B is warm, and the computer boots as far as it can (DSP card not ready), while the console still stays completely dark with no sign of life (unless I turn the WC generator on… then it pulses).
So, what could this be? I know that the “rail caps” symptoms are very similar (pulsing… not sure if there’s an audible pulse as well, since I NEVER turn the speakers on that early in the boot process)… but I think that usually happens even on internal clock, if those rail caps go bad. Since it only pulses when I turn on the external click, I’m kinda thinking that it might be something else?
Although I do suspect that it’s “capacitors” of sorts, that don’t buffer the necessary power when the unit is warm, somehow. So, maybe it WILL be a recap job of sorts… but I’m hoping that this might just be a few caps in the power supply, and not an endless number of rail caps across various circuit boards inside the console...?!
Unfortunately, my D8B has been living inside an Argosy desk, and the cables running past it in the pack, just got more and more over time, so I can’t even get to the BFC anymore, without some major effort (arm rest in the front of the Argosy desk out, push the mixer forward to clear some space in the back… then, in rather restricted space in the back, reseat cards or the BFC, etc.).
Getting “inside” this D8B, to do any sort of ribbon cable re-seat, will probably take about an hour of preparations, before I can even start taking the screws out on the bottom…
…that’s why I thought I’d ask around here, before just “popping the lid” and look for leaky capacitors or something, inside the D8B…
Does anybody have an idea what these symptoms could be indicative of?
Unfortunately, I can’t even say “F-it, I’ll just use the D8B as a controller via the ProBox), because when the console stays dark like that, it also won’t come alive when trying to boot with the ProBox connected. (Although similar to how the display and rude solo light came on late a few times, when booting warm, trying to boot with the ProBox connected also caused the display to turn on VERY late on the console, although this shouldn’t be dependent on where in the bootup stage the D8B computer is, since the ProBox only takes power from that, and doesn’t care about what’s going on inside that computer, “data-wise.”
Any hints, ideas or suggestions? Thanks very much in advance!