Pulling the small remainder of my hair out.. Finally solved

[callmevicjames]

Tried mixing and matching different hd and floppy drive combinations, and writing new floppy disks as well. Still got nothing. The only variable I have left is to try getting new floppy's themselves. I did use new ones, but they might have been sitting in the box for the last 15 years for all I know. Thanks for the suggestions, keep them coming pls.

[Markus]

Hello (first post on this forum ...and in bad english) well..

I had exactly the same probleme twice .... change in bios standart cmos settings "primary Master" all !!! parametres to a bad value" sav and exit , restart , reentre in Bios ,and reset Primary back to correct settings as fellowing,

If the Primary master is not listed or appears to be incorrect, press ESC, arrow over to Auto Detect
Hard Disk, and press Enter. This will search for and find all hard drives in the system. It is necessary to run
the Auto Detect Hard Disk if you add a new hard drive or more ram and is generally a good thing to do if
you are encountering any problems. (found in d8b database)

Check all other bios settings (can be found in d8b database)

sav exit and restart

give it a try Markus

[callmevicjames]

Tried as Markus suggested and intentionally put in bad settings, restarted, put back correct settings in the bios and still nothing.
I am going to try the CompactFlash card mod this afternoon/tonight and see what happens next. After that I think i'll just wait until I can afford the D8Bridge package and just use it as a controller. I really wanted to use it as a proper mixing station however I just can't go another 2 weeks without recording something. Will advise on outcome reguardless. Thanks.

[callmevicjames]

Well, the new 2gb cf card and adapter went in without issue. Bios sees the flash drive perfectly.
I have spent the last 2 hours attempting to retrieve the info off the old stock Mackie hd without success so I've confirmed the drive is toast. Now, spent another hour trying to format/create floppy disk images for use with installing the new copy of the O/S. The laptop I'm using to make the disks keeps getting errors while writing the disks so i'm going to purchase a brand new USB floppy drive for use on my modern laptop and new floppy's themselves and a new internal floppy ribbon cable hopefully tomorrow. Hair is almost completely gone.

[callmevicjames]

For anyone who has been following this thread about my many issues with the D8B I finally was able to get it up and running under the V3.0 operating system with the sp3 for the effects.
In the end I believe the problem was a bad processor which from what I've read on here is the one that no one else has had problems with.
Either way, she's up and running now after all the following changes....
Remove stock hd
install 2 gb compact flash card with adapter from cf to 40 pin
removed stock 64 mb ram
installed new 256 mb ram
removed stock floppy drive
installed new floppy drive
installed new floppy drive cable
removed old cmos battery
installed new cmos battery
purchased new floppy disketts
purchased new usb floppy drive
removed old cpu (previous owner had a Celeron 366 installed running a slower bus speed)
installed new Celeron 300a cpu
new 25 pin cable

After all these things she finally works so that was the list of what it took. Good luck to anyone else who has issues with these things.