Help- if-fw/dmmkii won't lock

[danoBC]

Hello, I'm desperately looking for help...

I’m a DM 4800 owner and it appears that my IF-FW/DMMKII card is no longer working.

I’ve been running this board on a i7 3660 Asus motherboard with 32gbs of RAM running Win 7 Ultimate.


I just performed an upgrade to an i7 7700 on an Asus Prime Z270 board with 32gbs of RAM running Win 10.

However, I kept my old OS intact on a secondary drive to allow access to old system settings and to experiment with migrating various plugins, etc.


After reconnecting the system after my upgrades, I could no longer get the IF-FW/DMMKII card to get a word clock connection from the computer.

It constantly was reading “unlocked”. The IF-FW control panel would see sample rate changes performed on the board, but continues to display “unlocked”. Changing buffer settings would cause the “Lock” to appear briefly before it switched back to “unlocked”.


My firewire card (mini-PCI) is a TI based chipset and has worked flawlessly since day one.


I have a 2nd card identical to the above – changing cards made no difference, same issue.

Replacing firewire cables caused audio dropouts to rise & rise – leading me to suspect the replacement cable was bad. The original cable I’ve been using over this past decade has never been moved/torqued, or otherwise. I believe this original cable to still be good.


I’m ensuring that I’m using the recommended Beta build of the IF-FW/DMMKII card drivers, and I’m also using this in conjunction with the legacy OHCI driver.


After all this testing, I decided that this was only left to 2 possible causes, corrupted OS, or bad IF-FW/DMMKII card.

Moving over to Windows 10, the exact same problems persist. Same symptoms.


I’ve even performed a factory reset on the console. At this point, I’m at a loss.


Does anyone have any further ideas for me to try?


My board works flawlessly in all other regards – my screen is actually in decent shape after all of these years as well, lol.


Please, any further troubleshooting steps I can take?


Thanks in advance,

Danny

 

[skier]

Have you tried going back and booting from your old Win 7 OS drive to see if everything works again? Hopefully, you also kept a copy of your DM's configuration so you can also reload that. If things work again, you'll know that your IF-FW/DMMKII is actually still working and that your new motherboard properly works with your other hardware. You might also have to go back to your old motherboard if it doesn't work with just going back to Win7 and and the prior DM configuration. I suspect that the problem likely lies more in proper configuration, needed drivers, or some such, rather than in a hardware failure that just coincidentally happened to occur during your upgrade.

When I perform such upgrades, I change just one thing, such as the motherboard or computer, and then test to assure it works with my other equipment. Then, I upgrade the next item or app. It's a more lengthy process, but it provides a more methodical and insightful process that helps me pinpoint where I need to focus my efforts.

 

[danoBC]

Thanks for the reply, Skier.
To clarify, the discovery of the problems all happened under the Win7 OS after getting the new hardware back from the shop.

Initially, I was able to boot under Win7, and through my troubleshooting, determined that the OS must be corrupt, or the he hardware bad, as I was working with it's old configuration, just on newer base hardware.

Virtually all of my troubleshooting was performed under Win 7, then repeated again under Win 10.

Unfortunately in preparing my system for the Win 10 install, I corrupted the Win7 install to the point that it would no longer boot without BSOD's relating to hard drive polling - things became a mess.

I did a clean install of Win 10 and followed all the guidelines posted in the forum sticky regarding Win 10, plus repeated all of my troubleshooting steps.

Just don't know which way to turn next?

 

[skier]

Alright, that's a different story. Am I correct in presuming that you don't have a backup copy of your old Win7 system drive? And similarly, do you also not have your old i7 3660 Asus motherboard? Unless you have both, you don't have an easy way to test your Firewire card unless you have access to another one that you know works. Be that as it may, it still doesn't mean that your Firewire card is bad. It could be, or you may not currently have everything configured properly and may not yet have installed all the needed drivers and their correct versions for this new configuration.

I'm still on Win 7 with no plans to move to Win 10 at this time, therefore, I'm not familiar with that configuration or the obstacles that must be overcome to make it a working system.

However, cmaffia and several others have made this transition and are therefore likely to be your best bet to getting your new configuration to work. cmaffia worked through much of this transition and documented his experience in this thread:

http://www.tascamforums.com/threads/dm-3200-4800-windows-10-compatibility-my-final-results.3811/


Finally, if that doesn't get you going, he and others will likely see this thread later today and may be able to offer additional assistance.

I'm sorry I can't be of more help.

 

[danoBC]

Again, thank you Skier.
The thread you've referenced has been my guide up until now. I methodically reviewed this throughout my experience of troubleshooting the Win7 install, and moving forward with the Win 10 clean install.

Unfortunately, the old motherboard/CPU/power supply are all without a case and OS drive for reverting back to for further testing (no, I don't have an image to fall back on <doh!>).

This is one of my next steps, but I don't currently have all I need to get this system back up & running in a timely manner.

I'm going to try moving PCIe slots for the firewire card, as well as run the internal diagnostics on the board, as per a few other tips I've read about since. I welcome any input from cmaffia and others as you've suggested.

Thanks for your input!

 

[Peter Batah]

Hello @danoBC Forgive me. I'm curious. Perhaps you have a friend or family member who can come over with his or her laptop or desktop PC. Could you not install your Firewire card into someone elses PC? I remember heading out to purchase my used DM-3200 armed with an old HP nx9420 laptop that had an onboard firewire connector. I installed an older verion of Cubase and I was off to the races. Ultimately you do want to test your expansion card, isn't that correct. Am I missing something. Heck, I'd lend you my stuff if you were nearby.

 

[cmaffia]

You may have missed the last section of my Windows 10 sticky.

Issues:

• An unrelated topic worth mentioning is the inconclusive report that FireWire 400 cards are not reliable in some of the newer motherboards and is causing issues with the IF/FW MKII. However, success has been reported here: http://www.tascamforums.com/threads/motherboard-chipsets-and-firewire-400.4254/

I’ve read in other forums that the newer chipsets have issues with FW400 cards/devices. This is most likely your problem.

 

[danoBC]

Thank you @Peter Batah ! I'm in the midst of rebuilding my old Win 7 hardware backup for testing purposes. I appreciate your input and your gesture of assistance.
Cheers & thanks!

@cmaffia this is invaluable information, thanks so much for bringing this to my attention.
Yes, I overlooked this point and am doing all I can to follow the great information and advice that can be pulled from the thread you've referenced.

I ended up ordering the exact SYBA 2-port Card (SY-PEX30016) with the TI XIO2213B chipset that @Juzz referenced in that thread. I *believe his Asus X99 mobo uses very similar architecture to my own Asus Prime z270.
The card arrives Thursday, so I'll install and report back on my results.

As mentioned to @Peter Batah above, I'm also going to build up my Win7 machine to create some better testing options to ensure the Tascam IF card is indeed still working.

Hopefully I can re-assemble my old workstation in time to verify the IF card in time for testing with the SYBA card. If the IF card proves good and the SYBA doesn't work, I'll try the SIIG w/Via option.

Thanks for your input everyone. Most appreciated!

 

[skier]

You're very welcome! Please let us know how you make out.

 

[danoBC]

Success, it works!!!
Thanks to @cmaffia & all for your input on this issues.

Replacing my firewire 400 card with the Syba SY-PEX30016 3 Port Firewire card was a success.
To my suprise, this card didn't come as advertised. I'd been expecting this to come equipped with the TI XIO2213B chipset.

Instead, this card is equipped with the TI XIO22138ZAY chipset.

A simple replacing of my old FW 400 card with this one, and all shows as normal now on the IF control panel. Solidly "locked" at all buffer sizes!

I still have plenty of system configurations to do (missing plugins, etc). But from my initial tests, I was able to get down to buffer sizes of 128 and still have Cubase 9.5 playback a older project of aproz 65 tracks without breaking a sweat. Stable, no pops or clicks - the system remains incredibly responsive.

It's nice to see the fruits from all of these recent hardware upgrades coming together!

Again, thank you all for your assistance on this issue. I hope this thread proves useful to other DM owners. It was a lifesaver for me!

Cheers all, happy mixing!

 

[Peter Batah]

@danoBC Glad to see that things finally worked out for you. Now, go ahead and make some great music. Happy Holidays to you and yours.