HELP!!! running 2 core cards on mix sys & lights on cards??? HELP!!!

[A Spooner]

Hi. I have an old mix plus system and am using a digidesign expansion chassis.

I am running 2 core cards and 4 farm cards in the following order: core, core, farm, farm, farm, farm,dsp card. Is this correct???

Here are some of the problems:

Can't get the digi test to work correctly. Thought I had a bad farm card because i got the "unable to build dae deck" message. The test only showed one core and 2 farms -- didn't show the others -- and it wouldn't run test, saying that it was not configured correctly. Removed the farm card that I thought was defective and I was at least able to get protools to open my session... but it reconfigured my i/o's??? Why would changing the cards cause my i/o's on my sessions to be reconfigured??? Also, only one 888 is now showing up on the I/o... the other three seem to have gone on vacation???

I have 4 888's, one to each core and one to two farms.

What do the lights (red, green, yellow) mean on the cards????? Does that tell you if they are good or bad???

Sorry if this is confusing... but I'm about to pull my hair out!!! Wait I already did. Thanks for any help. Alan in California (562) 430-7862

[John_Toolbox]

Hi. I have an old mix plus system and am using a digidesign expansion chassis.

I am running 2 core cards and 4 farm cards in the following order: core, core, farm, farm, farm, farm,dsp card. Is this correct???

yes, that's the proper slot order.

but it reconfigured my i/o's??? Why would changing the cards cause my i/o's on my sessions to be reconfigured??? Also, only one 888 is now showing up on the I/o... the other three seem to have gone on vacation???

Because each card adds the possiblity of more i/o. You need to go to hardware setup and tell it what interfaces you have connected to your cards. Every time you remove or add a card, you'll need to do this.

[A Spooner]

i know this might sound stupid, but when i'm mixing, how does protools allocate the power for all the plugins to the core, farm and dsp cards when i'm not using i/o's?

also, do you know what the little lights are on top of the cards and what they mean?

thanks for your help man

[John_Toolbox]

You will see in your system usage window the plugin "Stereomixer24" (or stereomixer16 if you are working at 16 bit). Notice that when you add an i/o to each card, a small percentage of one chip on each card is applied to this plugin. If you add more tracks, busses, more plugins, etc. the amount of DSP applied to "Stereomixer24" is increased(in addition to whatever DSP the plugin itself may use).

The lights indicate that the card has power, and/or that the card is connected to the TDM bus (via the ribbon cable). Can't remember which light means what, if your cards are all seen by pro tools don't worry about it.

[A Spooner]

in the digitest, it only shows one core card & 2 farm cards and won't run the test because it says it is not configured correctly??? How else do I know if protools sees the cards?

[Craig F]

sound like you need to pull all but the first Core card
run DigiTest,
if it passes add a card
run DigiTest
if it passes add a card
run DigiTest
if it passes add a card
run DigiTest
ect. ect. until the problem can be isolated
might be a bad card or bad TDM ribbon cable
do you have the cards in the correct order in the chassis?
what computer, OS and, version of Pro Tools are you trying to run?

[A Spooner]

I'm running old gear but it's been really cool until last week. PT 5.1.3 and mac os 9. Last week, got the "unable to build dae deck" so I had a bad card which I removed. That then caused some other issues. but i think i'll try the test one card at a time. however, i think i ran the test a few years ago and got the same kind of non-results but everything has always worked pretty error free, like i said, until last week. hmmmmm.