broken HD Core Accel card and nearest Digidesign Technical Support Office

[jacko]

My friends encountered a huge problem - HD Core card failure. It is still under warranty. The studio is down. I found this information:

Digidesign hardware is warranteed for a period of 1 year from date of original purchase from an authorized Digidesign Dealer. Inquiries regarding repairs must be handled by calling your nearest Digidesign Technical Support Office in order to determine if an actual hardware repair is required, and to obtain a Return Authorization (RA) Number. Repairs are handled by Digidesign factory repair facilities (in California, Ireland, and Japan) or local Authorized Repair Centers (ARCs). A valid RA# is required, and product must be shipped prepaid to the designated repair location. For warranty repairs - parts, labor, and shipping from Digidesign back to the customer are covered by Digidesign.

What is my nearest Digidesign Technical Support Office? I am in Poland. The card that broke was bought online from KMR Audio 6 months ago. Local Digidesign Authorized Repair Center "Digipark" refused to deal with one year warranty because the card was bought somewhere else.

What is the quickest way to minimize studio downtime in this case?

[Drew Mazurek]

Call Avid and get them to send you a card (they should ship it today) and then you can return the broken card. I believe this is called expedited service and it does cost extra but it downtime is costing you money, it can be a life saver.

[Violet]

Originally Posted by dmazurek

Call Avid and get them to send you a card (they should ship it today) and then you can return the broken card. I believe this is called expedited service and it does cost extra but it downtime is costing you money, it can be a life saver.

How much extra are we talking here? If it was just the shipping, that would be an awesome move from AVID on handling their elite customers.

[Drew Mazurek]

I had to get an A/D card fixed and the "regular" way (send it in and then wait for it to come back) was $270 and the "expedited" method (they ship right away and I send back the bad cards later) was $399 (to and from shipping included). Worth it to me.

[the dude]

before you send it back
look on the back of the card near the rear back edge
so again backside of card rear edge, look for r35 and see if it's still there
it's a common problem when people try to install the card by force
the pci card guide will sheer the part off
you may need a magnifying glass to inspect it
there is also a capacitor just above this R35 that also falls off
if either one fall off the card will fail
Along with many other parts that get damaged and most are not detectable with your eye
You should just send it to my shop

you can send me macro image of this area and I'll take a look at it if you want

[quiroga87]

Hi! the capacitor is the 269? when you say .01 do you mean pF or uF? beacause it´s missing in my HD accel and need to repair it.

Thanks in advance

[Ankhoa]

I need help as well. I have the same error code "DAE error -4 encountered" under PT HD 7 and 8 versions with my recently bought used AVID PCIe Core card, but upon inspections (several times), I found no resistance missing - I did the inspection with Avid Repair technician assistance on the phone while I was looking at the core card board under a magnifying glass. There wasn't any thing missing, all resistors and capacitors seem to be in their places.

However, this card is recognized and shown by my MacPro as "Digidesign HW (PCI)" under its Sound card I/O, but did not got stuck at the very first step of "Hardware Initialize" when I turned on Protools HD 9. I did the Digitest but it did nothing happen, it didn't seem to recognize the card.

Avid Repair technician advised me that the cost of fixing up missing resistors (error corde DAE -4) is around $225 and the normal repair price tag for the card is $650. Ouch! This is quite expensive for a card that already cost us above $2K.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Is there anything else once could do to test the core card? Is there an inexpensive solution to fix this problem?

[Ankhoa]

My apology, I meant to say "However, this card is recognized and shown by my MacPro as "Digidesign HW (PCI)" under its Sound card I/O, but it got stuck at the very first step of "Hardware Initialize" when I turned on Protools HD 9. I did the Digitest but nothing happen, it didn't seem to recognize the card."

Is there a local electronic repair shops around LA that can tackle this problem inexpensively? Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Soundtrack2life]

I know this is an old post but this goes out to "the dude": Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! With your guidance I ordered to proper resister value and with a BIG magnifying glass with light, pair of tweezers & a low wattage soldering iron (with a point) fixed the card all by myself :) FWIW I have been soldering cables & etc since the mid 80's however this was my first ever attempt at fixing a card with surface mount components and not to mention anything this microscopic LOL. But I didi it!!! Thank you again. Joe

[jdleyden]

What resistor did you end up using? From my search I'm, looking at:
10k 1 % 1/8W 75 V
1608/0603

Or is the case code 2012/0805?