d8b Data Cable

[juanbanzai]

Can't tell you how grateful I am that this forum exists. I just took possession of a d8b that the station I work for was going to scrap. It had seen little use when it was in one of our studios, but it HAS been sitting in a storage room for the past 5 years. I've been trying to locate everything the board and power supply need to get it working again, but as you might expect, accessories for the board have disappeared. One of the most important things I need is the 25-pin data cable that connects between the board and the PS. We have dozens of cables in our gear closets, but I want to see if the cable the d8b needs is a pin-to-pin, straight through cable. If it is, I have that problem solved. If not, is there a schematic that shows the pin-out so I can make one?

Thanks very much.

[Y-my-R]

A 1:1 cable will work.

I never got a DB25 data cable with any of my D8Bs, and just tried old printer cables and such, that I had lying around. I think of the 4 or 5 cables like that I tried, only one didn't want to work (and that one didn't fry anything, when I tried it).

On a number of occasions, I even connected a few of these printer cables together to have them reach further and the D8B still booted and worked just fine (but I wouldn't really recommend this), so I don't think the D8B is particularly picky about these cables, as long as it's a straight-through pin-out. .

So, if you have a cable with a 1:1 pinout, you should be good

Best of luck, and have fun with your "new" D8B

[doktor1360]

Can't tell you how grateful I am that this forum exists. I just took possession of a d8b that the station I work for was going to scrap. It had seen little use when it was in one of our studios, but it HAS been sitting in a storage room for the past 5 years. I've been trying to locate everything the board and power supply need to get it working again, but as you might expect, accessories for the board have disappeared. One of the most important things I need is the 25-pin data cable that connects between the board and the PS. We have dozens of cables in our gear closets, but I want to see if the cable the d8b needs is a pin-to-pin, straight through cable. If it is, I have that problem solved. If not, is there a schematic that shows the pin-out so I can make one?

Thanks very much.

Hey Juan... in stock, readily available for shipping, 3 to 25 feet lengths... shouldn't break the bank, either...

https://www.infinitecables.com/serial-parallel/serial-cables/db25-serial-cables/db25-male-to-male-straight-through-cables/db25-male-to-db25-male-serial-cable-straight-through/

[juanbanzai]

Thanks for the reply. I found a plethora of cables in our shop so I should be all set. I don't even think I'm ready for that yet.

When I first fired the d8b up, I got the treaded "error 43 call tech support" error. When I see a message saying "host not found", I immediately think the boot sector of the HD is corrupt or some other issue. Given the fact that the drive in the d8b sounded like it was drilling teeth, I didn't care if it had failed because I was going to replace it. I just can't work with a sound like that in my home studio. I was able to find dozens of IDE 20g to 40g drives in the shop that were working perfectly so I formatted them and made sure that the partition was less than 32 gig. Got a copy of OS3 and installed it onto some floppies. Yes, we had THOSE laying around the shop too. However, I've tried four drives so far in the d8b and every one fails when the BIOS tries to read it as the d8b's computer posts. I've made sure any jumpers on the drives are set for "master", and I've also did a pin to pin continuity check on the original IDE cable that's in the unit. Everything checks OK. Each of the drives can be read perfectly with my IDE adapter for my main PC.

I'm wondering now if there's a problem with the BIOS... or perhaps formatting the drives to FAT32 is not the way to go. It's frustrating because I'm getting the same error message on the d8b with the new drives as I was with the old one I took out. Unfortunately, the old drive is damaged because I can't read it with any adapter or enclosure.

I'm sorry if I shouldn't be asking this question here since it appears I'm hijacking my own thread. If I need to repost with a new title, let me know and I'll take care of it.

Thanks again.

[Jondav1120]

Hi Jaun,

I was able to find dozens of IDE 20g to 40g drives in the shop that were working perfectly so I formatted them and made sure that the partition was less than 32 gig.

It's possible that the problem lies in the formatting. I have a recollection that others have reported that the D8B is very picky about formatting and preferrs a disk that has been formatted with the Mackie utility.

However, I've tried four drives so far in the d8b and every one fails when the BIOS tries to read it as the d8b's computer posts.

Does the BIOS not "see" the drives at all? If you hit "Delete" as it starts to boot and run "Autodetect Hard Drives" does it then find the disk? I know Mackie doesn't recommend using the autodetect setting, but I have found it useful on occasions to find an apparently "dead" hard drive.
Is the BIOS battery good and have you checked the BIOS settings against the database here?

Best regards

John

[juanbanzai]

Hello John.

I have indeed gone through all of the BIOS settings to ensure they match to what I found here. I also replaced the battery in the motherboard since it was shot. It appears that the motherboard isn't seeing the HD at all. I tried using the auto detect in the BIOS settings, but that too isn't seeing the HD. I just confirmed that the BIOS has saved the new settings because I thought that even with the new battery installed there might be a problem.

I'm wondering if I should have the main hock and data cable to the d8b disconnected while I'm running these tests. All I did was pull the power supply out of the rack and onto a cart to work on it.

Aaron

[Jondav1120]

Hi Aaron,

Ok, remove as much as you can from the motherboard (midi card, network card), leave the db25 data cable and power cables to the console disconnected and disconnect the floppy drive data cable. Try to boot with just the graphics card, RAM and the disk connected. If the BIOS can then see the hard drive, start adding parts back in until it fails. On the other hand, if the BIOS still fails to see the hard disk, then connect the hard disk to the secondary IDE port on the motherboard and try again.
If you can get into the BIOS and change / save settings then the RAM, processor and graphics card are likely to be ok.

Regards

John

[juanbanzai]

Hi John.

I'm not sure if anyone has tried THIS before, but I actually found another mother board for this thing in the shop. Installed it and "voila" the unit posts and then accesses the floppy drive to install OS 3. The unit whirrs away for a bit, then stops on a green asterisk in the upper right corner of the display. I waited for a bit for anything to happen, and of course, nothing did. I had no choice but to use a USB to floppy device I had to burn the OS image discs... but I'm thinking there may be bad sectors or something similar on the floppy. The Mackie OS extract file stopped twice while trying to install the OS onto disc 1, but I hit "ignore" and just let it finish. Probably not a good idea.

Aaron

[Jondav1120]

Hi Aaron,

Sounds as though the disk controller on that original motherboard has packed up, good that you got it to POST though...making progress!! Are you trying to install with the console connected? When installing the software the console needs to be connected as it uses the display and a few of the buttons to select various install options.

Regards

John

[Jondav1120]

Hi Aaron,

Just a quick thought, if we are having trouble with the floppy creation and reading process, then another option is to download the files from here , and write the image directly to the hard drive.

Regards

John