Random automation

[buckhopper]

Hi there, first time posting.

I just purchased the Mackie D8B my company had been using since 2000 and have been building a home studio around it. The board is in great shape and so far, everything I've tried has worked out well. But one thing that's frustrated me is the automation.

Everything operates as it should except that the channels will randomly pop in and out of write and read mode without me doing anything. When I set to Auto Touch and play back my material, the board will lock up, the automation will play back, all the faders will move-- but without me touching anything at all, I'll watch the WRITE button light up randomly on channels and overwrite my automation.

I've noticed that when I reset all the faders to unity and just sit and wait, I can see the tracks gradually shifting to -0.1 and +0.1 on the computer screen. I'm guessing that the board is reading this random nosiness as fader moves which is triggering the Auto Touch.

Is there any way for me to reduce the sensitivity of automation on the board so that the faders won't trigger into Write mode unless I really mean it?

Much thanks, and it's great to find so much support online for this very cool digital board!

My Mackie D8B:
Mackie OS v5.1
Celeron 300MHz
2 DIO-8 cards (Channels 1-16)
1 PDI-8 card (ALT I/O)
1 MXF, 1 UXF
Apogee Word Clock
256 MB

[Phil.c]

There's no way to reduce the sensitivity of the automation.

Does this happen on all projects or just the one, because i've had automation going crazy from time to time but it's just on the one project.

If it's on all projects then I would reload the OS and go from there.

Phil

[buckhopper]

So far, I've seen it on every project I've done, but admittedly, I've not done many projects with this board since installing it.

I'll reload the OS. It hasn't been reloaded since it was put into storage at work months ago, so it's probably a good idea for me to do anyway.

Thank you for the tip!

B-Hop #7

[Crash]

You might have a corrupt session file causing these oddities as well. You can back up all of your session files to a floppy, throw away your start up file and reboot. The console will write a factory start up file on the reboot so nothing to worry about there. You may able to figure out if you have a bad file by going this route. This is just one more thing to check while you are troubleshooting.

[buckhopper]

Creating a new session file absolutely worked. Thanks for the help, guys! I also dug up an old Seagate 7200 RPM 160GB drive I was able to clamp down to 32GB and install into the CPU. Was a pain in the butt removing the old HDD (which was original stock!! Still working!!), but I got it out, put in the new one, and re-installed the OS and plug-ins, no sweat.

Only thing that got me-- the Database portion of this site is kind of misleading. I kept getting confused by the database claiming the D8B could handle a 32GB drive, but recommended partitioning and formatting the hard disk from the D8B CPU after booting from a floppy with MS-DOS 6.22 installed. Since MS-DOS 6.22 predates FAT32, it's only capable of formatting a FAT16 partition which maxes out at 2GB. And according to Mackie's own documents, the 5.1 OS can handle a FAT32 partition.

After careful reading and re-reading of the instructions from Mackie, I saw that they do NOT recommend partitioning and formatting the disk from the D8B CPU itself. They do recommend booting whatever PC you're using from a floppy and using FDISK and FORMAT to do the job, but they never specifically call out MS-DOS 6.22. There was a way back in the Windows 98SE days to create a bootable floppy with a DOS-like OS that was actually called MS-DOS 7.0 or something like that (I forget), and THAT version of MS-DOS could partition and format a disk into FAT32. Mackie must have intended customers to make a bootable with that version of MS-DOS, since they specifically call out FAT32 as being the preferred format.

I ended up putting my new HDD into a USB frame and using Disk Management in Windows 2000 to partition and format the drive with a 32GB FAT32 partition. I popped that into the D8B and had no trouble installing 5.1 v445 on it. And it seems to run just great.

The drive I pulled out of the D8B was FAT16, though-- so I'll report if I run into any problems. But so far, I've got a much quieter-running, faster-booting D8B with an extra 30GB of disk space!

[anyhorizon]

the Database portion of this site is kind of misleading. I kept getting confused by the database claiming the D8B could handle a 32GB drive, but recommended partitioning and formatting the hard disk from the D8B CPU after booting from a floppy with MS-DOS 6.22 installed.

Where does it say that?

Peter

[buckhopper]

It's Rule #4 of the "Hard drive replacement: 10 Golden Rules" in the Maintenance section.

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

Oddly, Rule #3 actually tells you to use your FAT32-compatible Windows drive maintenance utility to get rid of the partition first then use MS-DOS 6.22 to re-partition and re-format... which would only allow for a FAT16 format.

[anyhorizon]

Well I didn't authorize that and in fact, have never seen that listing before. The previous post, "Formatting The Hard Drive" is correct. I don't have control over the database here as I did on the other forum.

Anyway, glad you're up and running.

Cheers,

Peter

[Petersueco]

Please let me know exactly what has to be fixed in the Database.

That inclusion was one of the latest additions to the Database from a user that had successfully reinstalled a hard drive in his d8b.

Peter Holmquist.

[High C Double G]

This is the very reason anyhorizon never let me say anything in the database... oh I tried, I pleaded, I even offered him money once and of course he was polite about it... something like, yeah I'll check that out, good idea Mike!

I honestly could see anyhorizon's face at my suggestions... something like this I think,



Hey Mr. Holmquist,

Everything okay with everyone where you are... I heard you got hit with a couple of good shallow ones. I am in Earthquake country too, not a day goes by I don't think about it with all the recent bad ones the world is seeing.
Anyway I hope everyone is safe and damage minimal.

All my best,
Michael