After studio re-config and clean it's all gone pear shaped!

[dean]

Hi guys, i was looking forward to buying gear this week to complete my d8b/hdr/imac/logic setup after the great advice you gave me on my post last week. Unfortunately since then i've been having some problems with d8b.

Before getting all exited at buying new gear i thought it would be a good idea to reconfigure the studio, move things about, and have a bloody good clean of everything (no internals) before getting any new stuff in etc. Big mistake. Sounds crazy, but i kinda knew this was going to happen. Anyway....

These are the problems i have faced. Initally no visual on my lcd monitor together with error 43 on vdu on first boot-up/ D8B has frozen a couple times after a period of still time/ sometimes get 2-3 green bars of white noise on random channels/ even had a couple of channels permanently peaking/ pops occasionally/keyboards+mice sometimes dont work properly/ Sometimes it asks me to insert system disk and when it gets to the third it says 'memory extraction error contact tech support' and then on some boot-ups it's perfectly fine for hours.

It seems a little more stable at the moment after fiddling with bfc and data cable but im not holding my breath.

There's a similar recent post but i didn't wanna hi-jack it. Any ideas lads? I've obviously disturbed something unplugging and cleaning all leads, exterior of hardware etc. Just cant work out what it is!

Any help greatly appreciated, regards, dean....

[Phil.c]

Hi Dean,

First I would re-check all your leads, it's so easy for example to put your keyboard/mouse in the wrong way round.

Phil

[dean]

Hi phil, thanks for your speedy aid and support once more.

Well your spot on there mate, i was too embarased to mention that was the first thing i noticed on initial check was that the mouse/keyboard on d8b we're in indeed the wrong way round lol. Although most of the symptoms mentioned did continue for a good 5 days after, do you think the keyboard/mouse was the initial corruption trying to sort itself out?

It seemed to me and later appeared that the last fiddle with the 25pin data cable and bfc seemed to have ironed things out. I have since changed the data cable and still no more symptoms to date. Fingers crossed.

It would be nice to know, categorically what caused it. Could the whole mouse/keyboard corruption have manifested itself into all those symptoms etc?

dean

[dean]

Another question, should the data cable be a serial one or a null modem type?

dean

[Phil.c]

I'm not sure about the data cable but someone else here will put you right with that.

You will find that the D8b can be very temptimental and does'nt need much to upset it

Phil

[dean]

Ok cheers phil,

Last nite there were no problems right up to the point where i wanted to shutdown the d8b. After Ctrl Q, the window appears to save changes to startup, i press no and nothing happens. No message to say it's ok to shutdown. Tried with the mouse etc still no message to say it's ok to shutdown, it just goes back to normal screen, forced to just switch it off you know what's coming. Error 43 once more + unhandled pic when i put system disk 1 in. I have 2 set's of disks and neither work. The data cable i bought was the serial one not the null modem type.

Gonna have a good crack at sorting this out today before the boys turn up tonight. Any ideas guys please pleasae throw them at me, many thanks

dean

[Phil.c]

Ok, here's a quick test hold the two connectors towards you so they are showing as D D the top left pin on the left connector is wired to the bottom left pin of the right connector and the top right pin on the left connector is wired to the bottom right of the right connector.

If I were you I would disconnect and reconnect the BFC making sure that it's screwed right in, sometimes there's an extra click. Also re-seat the data cable both ends and make sure there's not a floppy in the drive when booting.

It's also worth downloading again to your floppys because they are not totally reliable.

Phil

[dean]

Been on this all day, went to maplins n bought some new ram, cmos battery and contact cleaner. Cleaned all ribbons inside d8b and cpu/bfc/data cable connections to board etc. Put it all back together literally as the boys turned up to jam and hey presto! Fired up first time without a hitch and havn't had a single problem during jam session. Early days but looks promising. Gonna do a re-install with fresh floppy's when i get round to it for peace of mind. Cheers Phil.

New items changed: 133mhz 256mb sdram single module, think it still had an old 32mb running 5.1. not sure tho / cmos battery / Serial 25pin data cable (not null modem type)

I still need clarification that it's the correct data cable i bought, cant seem to find any concrete info on that. Everything is working great but i have that nagging doupt about the data cable due to the choice of two that i had.

dean

[Casey_Pittman]

I want to say that the data cable needs to be 1 to 1, 2 to 2 and so on. Not a crossover cable. I bought my d8b with out a data cable and have been using an extension db-25 that is 1-1 for a couple of years and it's worked fine.

-Casey

[Phil.c]

Ok, here's a quick test hold the two connectors towards you so they are showing as D D the top left pin on the left connector is wired to the bottom left pin of the right connector and the top right pin on the left connector is wired to the bottom right of the right connector.

I don't know if you would call mine a 1 to 1 but it's the one that Mackie supplied when I bought my D8b

Phil