Absurd startup and routing issues with two 192 units

[zkw12345]

Hey there,

The studio I work out of is running PT 12.7.1 on a Mac Pro Mid-2010 tower (2x2.4ghz quad core xeon) on OSX 10.10.5 and we have been having extremely frustrating issues with two Avid 192 units lately.

Every time I start PT, I get this error:
"Unable to find an Audio Interface attached to the first HDX card. Please check power and DigiLink cables."

So, previously the fix for this would be to turn off both 192 units, wait a second, turn them both back on (first one followed by the second one), press "OK" on the error message once the lights on the units stop flashing, and then you would be good to go.

However, now we are having a more serious issue. After doing the same procedure as above, the second 192 unit's I/O is all kinds of screwed up. The I/O in PT is all correct and seems to be routed fine, but what should be I/O channels 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 come up as I/O channels 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 on the actual 192 unit.
I/O channels 1, 2, and 3 have disappeared and I/O channels 9 through 16 don't work at all.

The first 192 unit works fine (channels 1 - 16). This only occurs on the second 192 unit. It is NOT an I/O issue within the session or PT routing, I promise. Even deleting and defaulting all inputs, outputs, and busses in sessions will not fix the issue at all.

Digitest won't even open, just "quits unexpectedly" upon startup.

Sometimes, upon random reboot, the problem goes away and everything is routed fine. We then keep PT open and the computer turned on indefinitely but the system just got restarted and now I cannot solve the issue no matter how many times I reboot. We've been using the same system and the same two 192 units for about three years. No idea why this just started happening now



edit:
After doing the rebooting system + starting up PT and turning the 192s on and off about five times, the problem finally disappeared. I guarantee if I close PT again, it will come back. This has been happening for about a month now.

[albee1952]

Given what you describe, I would pull both units out, pop the tops and clean/reseat every connection you can(certainly the ribbon connectors to the IO cards as well as any PSU connections you can find). I would also make sure the loop sync ports are not loose(the NC connectors thru the chassis). When they go back in the rack, inspect and clean the Digilink connections and be sure to get the loop sync cables on tight(I had one pop off in the rack after working for months). Given how cheap they are now, I might be a good idea to buy a spare.

Last bit, not sure what your knowledge level is on these, but the hardware setup is decidedly not intuitive(at least not to me), so getting 9 thru 16 configured right for your connections(Analog vs. AES vs TDIF vs ADAT) can take some trial and error. After wrestling with that twice, I saved a batch of screen captures showing everything for my needs(I would not be the least bit embarrassed about this)