...........and I have no idea as to what happened at all. This is my first post here-my introduction of sorts. My name is Archie/Musically Mr M. I've been a user of TASCAM gear for many years........at least back to the 80's when the recording bug bit me after college. Got several vintage pieces in my studio- open reel, cassette Portastudios that still see service today, digital Portastudios as well as software-based workstations as well. We have a three room space we use for a lot of projects in and around northeastern NC. Anyway...................I've got two working 788's (version 2.02) sync'd together that actually cover a lot of smaller projects I do (I use these two more than my 2488 Neo or the HP/Pro Tools/MixPad rig ) on to the problem....
I was working late on a mix using the 788's. I had finished for the evening and left the units running.....knowing I was coming right back to them the next morning. When I walked into the studio the next day, there was this loud popping coming from the speakers, quickly tracking the noise down, I found one of the 788's in what seemed to be an endless loop of rebooting itself over and over again. I also noticed that it never restarted back at the splash screen and the display was a bright yellowish color and all of the LED's flashed on and off.......like it does when you initialize it at power up. Then, that burnt amber smell as if something was shorting out and then nothing.
I disassembled the 788 looking for obvious signs of failure.....swollen/puffed capacitors, burnt resistors or other damaged components. chips etc.. The only thing I could find was that the Hard Drive had burnt out. (It was a 40 gig WD I purchased at a computer spares store) and the power supply was dead stick as well. I changed the fuses in the power supply and it worked fine. Have no idea what could have happened to that 788 though. It's the first TASCAM product that I've ever had trouble with in 30 years and with Gibson's latest acquisition of TEAC/TASCAM, god only knows what's gonna' happen with parts availability and service in the future. I really love the 788.....was the first digital Portastudio I ever owned with a lot of unique features for it's time. I've since purchase another one off ebay for $30.00 (no pwr supply) and it works like new with the salvaged power supply I have. Has anyone here ever had such a failure with their 788 and did/do you even have a clue as to what may have happened to it? I wanna' keep my two healthy as long as I can.
