Need help PLEASE!!!!

[curbsidealumni]

Hey guys,

Ok here goes,

I have wanted a D8B since the early 2000's. Finally bought one along with a non working HD24/96 with 2 monitors, keyboards mouses, all cables, 3 120gb hdd sleds and a firewire hdd sled chassis a few months ago for $700.
The console has 2 MFX and 2 UFX cards, apogee word clock, 3 digital optical cards, the Aes/beu card. Essentially fully loaded with mackie os 5.1. the HD24/96 is the same with the bios upgrade for larger hdd. the main hdd was bad. So after replacing and going through the bone yards trying to find a PC with a floppy drive. I reinstalled the os and its working like clock work. The console on the other hand well..... not so much. It was working beautifully until I accidentally turned on the HD 24/96 and then the D8B the GUI booted and it popped and froze. So I restarted it in the correct order and it was fine for a while. Then out of nowhere in the middle of recording, in the GUI a box popped up asking for the authorization code for the os. I restarted and it came back, restarted again and it went away BUT... Many of the faders were unresponsive in the GUI when moved and vice versa on the desk. I opened the cpu and reseated the cables then did the same to the console. Restarted and it booted fine but now different the faders were unresponsive in a different order and seem to have no motorized function plus all of the v pots were very erratic and jumpy with no real control over them. in the GUI the faders and V-pots were glitching and moving very minutely up and down on their own. I created a new startup mix as well and to no avail, the same thing happened on reboot. I didn't hear any of the intermittent thumping that Ive read about on this forum when pertaining to the rail cap issue. Although I seem to be experiencing some of those same symptoms. I have reseated all of the cables cleaned the brainboard and all connections associated with it and still the same. Can anyone give me a bit of insight as to what may be the underlying issue? I have been reading this forum and obtaining a lot of extremely valuable information. that said I do appreciate ANY help that you can provide and apologize if this has already been discussed and for the long winded post. thank you and blessings to you all!!

[Phil.c]

First of all, re-seating the connectors is all well and good but if there's just one wire not making contact on the connector spike then reseating doesn't work, on another thread, I had jittering eq, there was one wire not connecting.

What I do is, take a connector off, run your thumb nail (or something similar with no sharp edges) between the ribbon and connector both sides lifting it off the spikes, then put a few drops of circuit cleaner in there and then squeeze the connector back tight on the ribbon with a pliers.

I'm not saying this will cure your problem but at least you know that the connection is ok, the other way to check is with a meter and a probe at each end of the ribbon, don't forget that there are connectors that you can't get to, to reseat.

[curbsidealumni]

Thank you for your reply. I cleaned the brain board with baking soda and distilled water dried it in the oven per the instructions on another site for cleaning PCB boards. I disassembled most of the console and reseated any connection that I saw. Would a bad connection also be the culprit in the other issues that I mentioned as well? I'm sorry if I sound like a noob, but indeed I am. I will go through the connections again and clean them with some circuit cleaner and see if that helps. thank you again for your reply. blessings to you!

[Phil.c]

Cleaning is not good enough if there's a wire in the ribbon not making contact with the spike, check for continuity either end, it takes a while to do with all of them!

[curbsidealumni]

in the process of disassembling the whole console and doing as you suggested . wish me luck! thank you again.

[Phil.c]

I wish you luck, however, this might not be your problem but at least you will have eliminated the ribbons!

I found it easier to get out the long alloy tray that the brain board sits on by removing one side panel.