Please Help New User -What Y Cables do I need for Avid 888

[whosarmy]

Hello
I am hoping someone can help me figure out what cables I need to connect 3 Avid 888 interfaces to a Mix Plus system (Core and Farm Cards). I was told I needed Digidesign Y cables and I bought them on ebay but they dont fit. Any help would be appreciated. Right now I have one cable that connects one of the interfaces to the core card but I have no way of connecting the other 2 interfaces as I think I need a special cable. The connectors on the back of the AVID 888's look like old SCSI wide connectors but Im not sure. Thanks for the help. Mark.

[John_Toolbox]

You need the digidesign "legacy" cables. They have a DB60 male on the card end and the 50 pin SCSI on the interface end, and are usually 12 feet in length.

The Y cable is DB60 male to (2) DB60 female and allows you to connect two interfaces to one card... but it will also require two interface cables. Y cables will work on mix core, mix farm and d24 cards but not on the original DSp farm cards.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by John_Toolbox

Y-cables will work on mix core, mix farm and d24 cards but not on the original DSp farm cards.

While this info does not help the original poster (but perhaps someone else), the Y-cables will also be compatible with current HD interfaces' legacy port.

The reason for the very existence of Y-cables is that Mix-era cards can handle 16 i/o each, and for some reason Digidesign was not able to (or didn't want to) provide full 16 channels out of the 888 interface. I mean, there's 8 analog i/o and 8 digital i/o so why not make it a 16 i/o box? It was probably too much at that time, but nevertheless there was need for such a cable that makes it possible to fully utilize each installed card.

OP, if you installed another farm card to your system, you will not need Y-cables at all. Then you'd have three cards and three interfaces, and you could connect each interface straight to the cards without extra hassle. Naturally you would have to bite the cost of the extra card, but those can be had dirt cheap on eBay. Just a suggestion, if you want to make your cable setup simpler

[John_Toolbox]

Originally Posted by JFreak

While this info does not help the original poster (but perhaps someone else), the Y-cables will also be compatible with current HD interfaces' legacy port.

And to add even more confusion to that, the avid 888 and 888/16 won't work with hd's legacy port, only the 888/24.