d8b Forum

Greeting Mackie D8B Family,

My name is Dawnde. I am a drummer/percussion player by night and Senior Network Security Engineer by day.

What brings me here today is that I recently acquired a Mackie D8b. I got it home and plugged it in and was able to successfully POST. I saw the faders on the board move and was able to get as far as plugging a line into Mic 1 but could not hear any audio. I could see a level, made sure Phones 1 was turned up (the basics.) I did not have any peripherals plugged in at this time (Monitor, keyboard, mouse.) I could not find a way to properly shut down the unit so I switched the power button off on the CPU. When it attempted to reboot it would not post and I received a "System Error 43 - Host did not Boot! Check Computer Rack or call Tech Support." Long story short I did some researching. I went and replaced the CMOS battery as well as grabbed a monitor and connected it to the CPU so I could see the POST output. It appears that the hard drive is not being seen. I did the needful. I reseated the power, ribbon cables, tried the other IDE channel and still nothing. The next step is to pull the drive and see if I can connect to it using a laptop. My goal is to copy what ever information (5.1 upgrade folder (as I have red in other posts) and then I was going to obtain a 4GB CF from eBay.

So far my experience with this unit has not gone over so well. I am also reaching out to ebay and acquiring the PS/2 mouse, keyboard and the MIDI to PS/2 adapter. I have zero documentation with this unit. However, thanks to this forum it can be obtained. I was going to reach out to the manufacturer with my S/N to see if they will provide any other information based upon S/N (pass keys or activation numbers needed for the unit.)


This is actually why I am posting here first is to reach out to anyone willing to point me in the right direction.

Should I purchase the parts from eBay (Mouse, keyboard, adapters, 4GB compact flash, additional ram?)
Should I reach out to Mackie with My S/N to see if they can provide additional support? (Maybe they are able to provide me with software keys? 5.1 update?)

Should I attempt to pull the hard drive and access it via USB?


I have enclosed a link to what photos I took of the unit. There are also a few screens that show error messages.

https://imgur.com/a/AZZW0

I appreciate your time,

Respectfully,

Dawnde

OK, first of all, check the settings in your bios - if they are not set correctly, that could give you the issue with the harddrive.
Follow this:
http://www.sonido-7.com/d8b/maintenance.html#Post1

Second, don't bother reaching out to Mackie - they don't care about this system anymore, and don't support it.
A user on this forum (Munkustrap) managed to modify it, so you can get 5.1 plus plugins working regardless of the esn number. Read through this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1634
In there are guidelines on how to make it work. Ask questions if you run into problems.

Third:
I heartily applaud the idea of using a CF card instead of the harddrive - several of us have done it, and it works wonders.
The plus here, is that you can download an image I made of my fully installed system, use the image on your CF card, and then you should be set.

Regards
Anders

Anders,

First of all I wanted to thank you for your time. I at least wanted to come to the table and present the troubleshooting I could do w/o the mouse and keyboard. I am going to stop by Fry's Electronics and see if they can accommodate.

Second, thank you for the links. I am pretty sure I can make a bootable CF.

Lastly, could you point me to your image? I am also going to stop by Fry's and see if I can get a new CF. I know I have older ones at home. However, I would like to get new as this is pretty important. I remember seeing a list of parts I will need somewhere. I believe I could also get the list of what I need from the eBay auction (way to reverse engineer... Right?)

Much Respect!

Dawnde

First off, if you already have some CF's lying around, try them first. The OS is so small, it only fills about 8 Megabytes, plugins included!
Some people going the CF way mentioned having difficulties with some CF cards, although all the cards I've tried worked just fine. Try the ones you have first - if they work fine, you can always get a new one if you feel like it. (I don't think the speed will increase - again the OS is so small, and the files you write when mixing are only listing settings - it's so minor).

Second, you will need a CF-IDE adapter. This one looks prety much like the one I'm using:
https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Compac ... +flash+ide

Third, here's a link to a post I wrote about the procedure on putting the image on the CF card, link to my image included.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1912&start=10#p14362
(While it's not a completely fresh install, you can just delete the project I was fiddling with at the time, and you're set).

Let me know how it goes.
Anders