HELP! Frustrated!!! d8b won't boot

[Shoom78]

Good Morning,

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!!

Ok, after weeks on this forum and with all the wonderful and useful information from various people, I have come to the conclusion I am not as computer savy as I believed to be...and am afraid my d8b will never work for me again.

After a year of not using my D8b upon start up it displaced the infamous error 43 host will not boot...

I have done some much reading and gathering information and trying different suggestions, I have done the following.....

Purchased and replaced motherboard battery and reset BIOS settings according to information from SONIDO website...
Purchased new HDD
Purchased new Floppy Drive
Purchased new Video card
Purchased Compact Flash card adapter
Purchased floppy disks with MS DOS 6.22
Purchased New Ram memory to bring up to 256 MB

Yet with all this I still can not seem to get the cpu to load either Mackie OS 3 or OS 5.1 as I have both sets of disks given to me from former owner, which was over 15 years ago now.

I have been trying to follow steps given by various members but seem to be missing something or like I said my computer skills are in the toilet and I can't comprehend as I once thought I could. Talk about confidence killer...

I love my D8b like all of you and want to bring it back to life as music and recording on it has always been wonderful on it, what am I doing that is so wrong?

Is there anyone that could help me out, or someone on here that I could send my HDD or compact flash adapter to, who would be willing to load the MACKIE OS 5.1, I would of course pay you.

I thought that with this forum and information that I could piece everything together, I have spend all weekend trying various steps and procedures as given but to no avail. I seem to have all the tools but can't get it all to come together. Feel very lost and hopeless. Sounding desperate I know lol! But I am determined I do not want to invest in a new console. I just want to get this beast going again.

I have all the right parts and pieces, cpu & console fires up, seem to have power to HDD, floppy reads, display on console seems to read and install OS disks, just doesn't want to BOOT. Maybe need to switch to the compact flash drive instead of new HDD, I can read the HDD on my MAC lap top with the USB 3.0 to IDE Converter... Perhaps that is another reason of my troubles, my main computer is a MAC Book and most of the information and downloads are for PC. Am I dead in the water with that?

Again apologize for running on and on....I hope to get some clear instructions and or answers. Like the title to subject says....HELP!!!!!

Geez sound like a total rookie here.

Thanks

SHOOM

[Comsec14]

Send me a private message I will call you and walk you through the setup process

[Jondav1120]

Hi Shoom,

Where are you located? Happy to help also...

Regards

John

[Shoom78]

Good Morning John,

I'm located in the SF Bay Area, CA...

Thanks

Shoom

[Y-my-R]

Not sure if you are talking with someone offline about this already, but if not, here are a few more thoughts:

For troubleshooting purposes, and to figure out if your D8B generally works, I'd keep the setup as simple as possible and try to get it working in the simplest configuration, first.
So, in your case, I'd start out with the regular "spinning" harddrive, and forget about the Flash card and adapter etc., until you know it works with the good old noisy harddrive.
When you know that that's working, I'd clone the drive to the Flash drive, and upgrade the rack unit, then.

If there are too many new factors that could add additional issues, you might not be able to find the root cause.

Next, I don't recall where I saw this, but I think that someone had responded to you in another thread after I did, asking you how you formatted the harddrive. That was a really good point, that I didn't think about. If you formatted the drive from another computer (Mac, PC, etc.), I think you have a good chance of the drive NOT working the way it should.

I made that mistake myself a few years back when I got my first D8B, and if I recall correctly, it allowed me to install, but not to boot. So, this could very well be the cause of your troubles. I just don't recall if I got a blinking green asterisk, or if it failed with a different error before that.

If you DID use a Mac or PC to format the D8B drive, then I'd start over and format the drive via the D8B floppy disks first. The procedure is described here, in the "Formatting the Hard Drive" section:

http://www.sonido-7.com/d8b/maintenance.html

If you didn't do it like that, then sure... it's likely that the D8B will not boot properly after installing the OS from the floppies.

I'd try that first, then look at all other possibilities.

At this time, I'm reluctant to take my D8B rack unit out of the rack and take it apart to get to the drive, since it's been working without a hitch for a few years at this point. But I'll take a look if I can find a backup drive with the OS on it somewhere, that I could clone.

I know people on here typically recommend the Macrium app for cloning, and I used it for that at some point. But as far as I recall, only the trial is free, and that's long expired for me. IF I have a backup and would do a clone, I'd do it in "CloneZilla" format, since that doesn't cost anything. However, you kinda have to know what you're doing with that app, or you might wipe all your data of your PC's system drive, when attempting to clone a drive... not sure what has the steeper learning curve... installing the D8B OS, or using CloneZilla without risking to lose data...

...anyway... did you format the D8B drive via the first floppy disk before installing? If not, try installing again, after formatting the drive that way. This may just be the problem.

Best of luck!

[Shoom78]

Good Morning,

Yes I have tried all these steps over and over, now trying to retrace and start from scratch. That's why I'm so frustrated everything seems to be operating and looks about to load but stalls on restart with the following messages on my VGA monitor...

My hard drive spins up, floppy seems to read and install the disks.. I think... at least the mixer screen asks for all three disks and with the last one it says eject disk and reboot, after that I get nothing just a blank VGA monitor with the green asterisk in the corner....I have to then turn off and restart the cpu and then it reads the picture that I have attached....So beyond me at this point what is wrong or for that matter what I am doing wrong.

Worst thing is that with all this great information on this forum and all you great members I still can't seem to get through the steps. Super frustrating because I have just remodeled my studio and started to get excited about recording again and my D8b quits on me.....

Thanks guys appreciate your time, effort and advice..

Shoom

[Y-my-R]

Since you didn't mention formatting, let me ask very specifically to make sure this wasn't missed:

Did you add this line to the "Tools.ini" file on the first D8B installation floppy disk, and did the D8B format the drive before installing?
________________________
format:on
________________________

This is the critical step I mean, and this line is usually NOT present on the install floppies. So, unless you manually added that via a text editor, the harddrive is likely not formatted correctly, and you might end up with an error like in your picture.

If you did that, I'll put my thinking hat back on... but if you didn't, I can think about it as much as I want, and the D8B-based drive format, may still be the culprit

[Y-my-R]

Also, you didn't set the BIOS settings as they should be.

I didn't compare carefully and some other stuff also didn't quite look right in the picture, but the instructions specifically instruct to DISABLE the parallel port. It's active in your picture.

Please double-check all the BIOS settings as listed in the Database. They're at least not COMPLETELY correct, since I can spot at least one mistake in your screenshot (without even looking at the database for that).

[Y-my-R]

I have to apologize - the BIOS settings in the database say to keep the Parallel port on. I was wrong. Sorry!

I just usually turn that off, since it isn't needed. But that has nothing to do with the instructions in the database... that's just why it stood out to me as something that "didn't match", but it shouldn't cause any problems if it's on. Sorry!

I guess the main thing that looked odd to me in your picture, was that it lists a Pentium-MMX as the processor, and I hadn't seen this processor being used in a D8B computer, yet (I have 4 of them... each processor is a bit different, with at least a different speed). But that doesn't mean that it's not original. There seems to be quite a bit of variance.

Anyway... just wanted to follow up and apologize for claiming you did something wrong in the BIOS, when it was me who was wrong, sorry.

... the thing about the line that needs to be added to the Tools.ini thing is still relevant, though. So, that one could still be the cause of the problem.

[Shoom78]

Evening,

So I'm not sure what exactly i did but, seems I did change the BIOS setting on the LBA mode to On and the D8b booted however now my dilemma now is that it has loaded with 5.1 version but asking for the infamous Authorization CODE.....my fear is now if i mess with it further I may not get this back.....how do you go about the HACK or CRACK for the 5.1??? Getting closer boys, exciting as it is still nervous I may lose all this the second I turn the cpu off.

Thanks

Shoom