meters freezing/no audio/MFX cards not working!

[secretsound]

Hi, thank you for this forum. I'm having two problems:

1. My quite old d8b, which I've been running 50-60 hours a week ever since I bought it new (circa 2000/2001), exhibited a new problem today that I've never seen: After playing audio for about 20 seconds (Digital Performer 8/2011 Mac Pro/Two MOTU 2408s connected to the d8b via 4 lightpipe cables) the meters would freeze and no audio would come in or out of the board. Rebooted 4 times, same results. I could see that everything was fine on the computer and 2408s. Any ideas?

2. Since I had two more CPUs in my office, one with a mfg date OM1109, one 9M1807, I pulled them out and swapped the cables, first with the OM1109. Same problem. At this point, I figured the problem was with the control surface, but I went ahead and tried the 9M1807. It worked fine. As a matter of fact, it's been on for about 12 hours as I write this. The problem however, is that it does not recognize the 4 mfx cards I have loaded into the console. I powered down, pulled the cards, re-seated 2 of them and powered back up. Still no luck. It sees that there are cards in there because the slots for cards A and B under the Plugins tab say "none", while Cards C and D say "empty" (which they are).

Any help would be much appreciated. I cobbled through my session with some Waves reverb, but all my mixes are saved with mfx card reverbs and I'm finishing up several projects whose mixes have been tweaked and tweaked using these 'verbs. THANKS!

[FrankH]

The only thing I can give advice on is the cards. Clean the card connectors with a pencil eraser and then vigorously plug them in an out of each slot a whole bunch a times to exercise the slots and see if they come back to life. That's always worked for me.

[secretsound]

Thanks, Frank.
Update: 12+ hours later, I reinstalled the other two cards. Still no dice on the M1807 CPU which got me through my session tonight, but without Mackie reverbs. After the session I reconnected the 0M1109 CPU and my original CPU. Both see the Cards and they all work AND audio is passing in/out of the d8b with no problems. My original CPU has been on for over an hour, running fine. However I wonder if this is the beginning of trouble...

My original CPU has already progressed from the "meters flashing/loud audio pop 2x/second" occasionally on boot-up to now every 2-3 boots to sometimes doing it in the middle of a session. After 12 years, it finally fried the tweeters in my Mackie HR-824 monitors. I fear it may be time to finally look into some control surface options once I wrap up some projects that are in progress (although something's always "in progress").

Again, any suggestions welcomed. Thanks

[Phil.c]

Just a shot in the dark as I recently had loading problems with MFX cards, after re-seating/cleaning the connectors inside the D8b, everything worked ok, I don't think you mentioned doing an internal re-seat?

Phil

[secretsound]

Just a shot in the dark as I recently had loading problems with MFX cards, after re-seating/cleaning the connectors inside the D8b, everything worked ok, I don't think you mentioned doing an internal re-seat?

Not sure what an "internal re-seat" is, Phil. How is that different from just re-seating the cards, which I did? And the real puzzler is why 2 CPUs work fine with the cards and one doesn't...

[Phil.c]

Sorry for the confusion, I meant a ribbon cable connectors re-seat inside the D8b, but if two cpu's work and one doesn't, surely there's a problem with that cpu and not the cards in the d8b?

Phil

[Crash]

If you have a multi-meter, it might be worth checking the voltages on the big ass connector between all the CPUs. It is a power supply for the rig as well, so you might have something wonky on one of the CPUs. Somewhere on here I have a pic of the pins and their associated voltages. The reseating of all the internal ribbon cables is not a bad idea, has helped others with oddities.

[secretsound]

Thanks, everyone - I'll try that.