PT III no TDM clock detected

[jammanis]

hi all
been trying to get this system going. ran digitest 5.02 and it says the cards fail --disk i/o and dsp farm card-- cause no tdm clock is detected. i have an 882 interface hooked up. someone suggested bnc terminators? is that necessary since the clock comes from the interface? also the tdm ribbon node cable is attached properly and in place. any help would be appriciated.
joe

[DigiTechSupt]

Hi,

We do get clock from the interface so it could be the interface cable or the interface has a problem. Check the cable for bent or broken pins. Does Pro Tools launch at all? If you have a DAT machine or another device with a S/Pdif out you can see if you can get Pro Tools to function clocked to an external device. If this works your interface has a problem.

Thanks,
Digidesign Tech Support

[jeffwuollet]

My cards have done that on digitest, but they still work when I launch PT. Give that a try. Make sure all connections are secure, then just run protools and see it it works. Also, make sure that if you have any new hard drives, they're mac formatted. I forgot to do that.

[jammanis]

i cant even launch pro tools. it just hangs for a while then i have to reboot the computer. i also think there may be extension conflicts but cant tell for sure

[jeffwuollet]

Did you try trashing the DAE prefs and restarting? Just go into your preferences folder and delete anything protool related. Don't sweat it because it'll reappear when you start the computer up again. Give that a try. As far as extensions go, set the extensions to the basic OS extensions and turn on just the Digi extensions afterwards.

Aside from that, I don't know what it could be, but I doubt a bad interface would make your hang like that.

[DigiTechSupt]

Hi,

What kind of Mac is this in? You may also want to make sure that you do not need to upgrade your AMCC chips. Check out htis link:

http://www.digidesign.com/compato/pt3/cards.html

Thanks,
Digidesign Tech Support

[jammanis]

im running a 9600 in a marathon case. i have the disk i/o, dsp farm, and a samplecell II (with individual ram slots not the soldered on model). all cards have AMCC chip set revision Q. i thought that the chip sets being QC or QE work in a blue and white g3 but they should work in the 9600 if they are the Q rev chip. right? unless im reading something wrong. the link i was left in the last post says the samplecell II card wont work with disk i/o cards??? is this true? then i have a twin turbo 128 monitor card and a powerlogix usb/firewire pci card. all cards are in this order. (disk io being first) i was thinking of upgrading to a powerlogix g3 400 card too. will that work with the Q chips or is that not going to work?

[DigiTechSupt]

Hi,
If you have a 9600 the "Q" chip should be fine. The AMCC chip had to do with PCI slot compatibility we do not test or support processor upgrades but the AMCC chip should not be a factor but you may have other problems. I would pull all the PCI cards except for the Display card, the Core, and the Farm. Go to your System Folder/Preferences Folder and trash Digisetup, Pro Tools preferences, and DAE Prefs(the whole folder). Launch the Extension Manager switch to the base set of extensions and delicate it. Turn on the following extensions.

Digidesign Direct I/O
Digidesign DSP Manager
Digidesign Stream Manager
Digi System INIT
Open Music System ver. 2.3.8

Reboot and see if your Mac will get through the INIT.

You can get the correct card order from the installation guide below:

http://akwww.digidesign.com/support/...allGuide50.pdf

Let us know what happens,
Thanks,
Digidesign Tech Support

[Will Thomson]

Hi,

I know this is an old topic now but we (and others?) are still using several PTIII systems here and they still do great work, particularly using Sound Designer for fine editing! We had the 'No TDM clock' problem last week and I've given the details below of how we resolved it in case it's useful for any other users out there:-

SYSTEM: Beige G3 300mhz Tower, OS9.2.2 + (1 x Disk I/O) + (2 x DSP Farm cards) + (2 x 888 16-bit interfaces)
PROBLEM: "No TDM Clock..." APPEARED FOR NO REASON! NB: the Mac was nonetheless still able to mount drives connected to the Disk I/O card.

STEPS TAKEN / RESULT (using Digitest 5.0.2):-
NB: each step involves powering down, making a change, re-booting and running Digitest to ascertain the result (minor disclaimer: I'm pretty sure these steps are in the right order, but this report was written a couple of days after the testing)

1 Reboot system with OS Base set + Digi Init : no change
2 Re-seat *all* cards on PCI bus and TDM bus cable: no change
3 Remove all Digi cards and TDM bus cable again, clean contacts with Colclene and replace: no change
4 Check Apple Profiler : all PCI cards present and logged
5 Replaced the external HD on the Digi SCSI bus with known good drive (i.e. connected to the I/O card) : no change
6 Retrieve Digi Init, DAE folder and related Prefs from backups, from a time when the system was known to be working normally in case of file corruption : no change
7 Replace I/O with known good spare : no change
8 Replace I/O with another known good spare : no change

At this point it would seem highly unlikely all these cards would have failed simultaneously unless some sort of major failure within the G3 had occurred. But the Profiler could see the cards... So,

9 Removed Ext HD from I/O card, ignored (cancelled) the 'No Digi drive...' message (and for the following steps): no change
10 Remove DSP #2 and reboot : no change
11 Remove DSP #1 and reboot : PASSED - SUCCESS! No TDM clock error.

At this point it was noticed that for some reason, and unlike our other PTIII systems, the I/O card didn't have an interface connected, only the two DSP cards had an 888 each. So the I/O was passing Digitest with no interface or Ext. HD connected (I think Digi recommend having all peripherals attached when testing). Anyway, moving right along,

12 Removed the I/O card (the spare) and replaced it with the original I/O card : PASSED
13 Re-connected spare Ext HD to I/O : PASSED
14 Connected one 888 to the I/O card : PASSED
15 Launched Sound Designer : O.K, found the card & dsp and able to play a short mono file. Occasional 'Digi SCSI bus slow' messages, incl. opening Finder windows for the I/O drive. Didn't worry about that for now.
16 Added DSP #1 and TDM bus cable, *did not* connect an 888 to this card : PASSED
17 Added DSP #2, again *did not* connect an 888 to this card : PASSED

At this point all cards are passing the Digitest routines with no interfaces connected to the DSP cards. Moving along again,

18 Added an 888 to DSP #1 leaving DSP #2 without an interface : PASSED
19 Re-booted with original external HD : PASSED
20 Re-booted with original Extensions set (the studio's normal day-to-day set) : PASSED. SYSTEM NOW FUNCTIONING NORMALLY PLUS NO MORE 'DIGI SCSI BUS SLOW' MESSAGES!

Two days later... still working fine incl. Logic Audio TDM/PT etc. On reflection it was a shame we replaced the software items (e.g. Digi Init) early in the test because I now doubt there was a corruption problem. Everything started working again once we we down to a single I/O card with nothing connected to it i.e. no hard drive, TDM bus cable or interface. It suggests that only in this config. was the card able to reset itself after which all was O.K. I have never heard of the above as a method for solving this often reported problem and to my knowledge Digidesign never issued or added to Digitest a procedure to totally reset the Disk I/O. Most people (and me in the past) seem to have gotten round the problem by removing and re-seating the cards which may in itself caused the I/O to reset? Certainly in the above case the G3's bus connectors and card edge connectors were in perfect condition and not in need of cleaning or re-seating (I should add that the card fixing screws were properly in place which is very important otherwise the cards can be partially jiggled out of their slots - not a good design, PCI bus designers!). It might have been interesting to put the system back into it's original 'illegal' configuration of no interface on the I/O card (worked like that for years), but there wasn't time and anyway we know when not to start fiddling!

The next time we see a TDM clock error we'll shut down, go straight to the Disk I/O card, disconnect everything from it, reboot, shut down, reconnect it then reboot. It'll save a lot of time if it works! Also I notice users of much later systems also reporting this error, but apparently not fixing it this way. Maybe it's worth a try... (different hardware notwithstanding)

Regards,

Will
Dynamic Audio Production, UK