d8b Forum

Good Morning all,

It has been some three years since I last posted on here.

I have recently purchased and installed a CF Drive kit from MUD DUCK MUSIC, along with the drive he included on the card OS 5.1 with unlocked plugins.

Drive did not read at first and I got the famous ERROR 43 upon boot, the keyboard and mouse would not work so I could not access my BIO settings. I have purchased and installed PCI USB adapter and the keyboard works via this now, however the mouse seems to be frozen, and sometimes it works meaning the infrared light is on but no movement from it. I have a PS2 adapter coming as maybe my old one doesn't work anymore? Once I got the keyboard to work I went to change the BIO settings to AUTO to recognize the CF drive and it booted and loaded the OS 5.1

Problem #1- After OS loaded and VGA monitor displayed GUI seems the is still mouse frozen in the middle of the screen and I can not access menus nor safely shut down the console.

Problem #2- I have no audio in or out of the console. Tried both XLR & 1/4" inputs to no avail

My console has-
3 DIO cards- light piped to SDR for recording
Apogee Clock Card
2 MFX Cards
AIO 8 Card
PCI USB adapter
CF Drive Kit

I have browsed the forum and have seen similar issues from various users so I'm hoping new parts and checking the connectors will cure it, I have tried this before and has come back but for a short time, now again with the same issue of no audio. Quite frustrating especially when your ready to start putting material down.

Would really like to get this beast back up and running again, especially with the new OS and CF drive kit.

Appreciate any further input, insight and or tips

Thanks in advance

SHOOM

A USB keyboard works on the D8B, but a USB mouse will not.

There's actually a USB header/connector on the mainboard inside the D8B rack unit, where you could directly connect a USB 1.1 header/breakout cable (they usually come with a slot-cover, to install where the PCI/ISA cards poke out towards the back). The PCI card will likely use up an extra IRQ, and might conflict with other hardware in the system (which could potentially cause loss of audio... but this isn't likely the problem here, I think).
So, IMO, adding USB directly via the mainboard, is the better route for this.

However, either way you do this, the mouse will not work via USB. This is not a hardware problem but the Mackie OS has no driver for a USB mouse built in... but the keyboard evidently works, so I guess there's a driver for that built-in.

I added two USB 1.1 ports via the mainboard header to a re-purposed D8B rack unit, that runs Windows 98. A USB mouse DOES work on Win98 with the D8B rack unit, but the same computer will not recognize the USB mouse, when booting into Mackie OS.

So, unless you can get the PS/2 mouse working again (or maybe there's a PS/2 PCI card you could install, instead? That "might" work, but I haven't done this myself... still, you'd have to be careful how the IRQs are assigned in the BIOS), you won't be able to use the Mouse with the D8B.

Did you make any other changes in the BIOS, or was the battery removed at some point? If so, you'd have to re-do the BIOS settings per the database article here (first article on the top... starting by figuring out which of two possible mainboards is used in your D8B):

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

As for there being no audio... that could be related to the BIOS settings, but shouldn't be caused by anything you upgraded (...the Mud Duck system should be a drop-in replacement and not require anything else to be changed).

Is there a questionmark blinking in the right upper corner of the D8B's built-in display? If so, the D8B doesn't see any clock and if that's the case, will not show any incoming audio (if I remember right. It definitely won't pass it to the outputs, though).

Anyway... I'd try to get the PS/2 mouse working again, first. I have one D8B mainboard where the controller chip for mouse and keyboard seems to have gone bad, and never found a way to put that board back to use (with a working mouse). So, you'd want to be sure that you can get that working again, before taking a deep dive into what might be wrong with audio passthrough.

Y-my-R good to hear from you!

Thanks for the tips and advice.

Totally correct on the BIO settings I went in selected Auto and the CF drive loaded the OS 5.1 so good there.
Also looked into the usb and again you are correct keyboard yes mouse no.
Replaced mouse with track ball and new PS2 adapter both seem to work for now.

The no audio issue, I actually tighten the screws on the BFC and reconnected it and now the audio has seemed to have come back to life. Also took apart the back of the console and checked all the ribbon cables as well.

Also took advice from here and dumped my old start session files and created and new one.

Shutdown the console a couple times and restarted so far so good.

Keep my fingers crossed that remains the same.

Appreciate your time and effort!

Not going to lie this beast is a handful and have to keep babying it to keep it going. But what can I say I love it guess that's why I keep coming back here to read up on things and try to sharpen my skills on it.

I hope I can keep it running for years to come lol, kinda like everyone on here as well.

Best to you!

Thanks

SHOOM