MOTU 2408mkIII PCIe and Intel Mac Pro Connectivity Issues

robstudio · Post by **robstudio** » Sun May 27, 2007 8:27 pm

Hey gang, After playing about this weekend, things are running 100%. I'm having a great time!! Here is what I've noted in regards to the connection issues. I don' t believe these issues are related to a misalignment (with the slot itself), well inso much as worsening-- the case on the MacPro seems to be thicker. The card and the edge of the case don't seem to match, leaving little gaps between the case and card, which in turn doesn't allow the cable to fully sit in the f/w port. Upon switching cables between the pc & mac (exporting project fun...) I noticed both my fw cables snap lock into the pc card. When I plug them into the mac they feel sloppy and the one doesn't fully lock in, due to the case interferance. Over time and after a tug or 2 no more connection is definatly a possible situation... One wire is a thicker type, perhaps a motu standard one is order. I'm hoping you get this resolved

Regards, Rob
ps.. any ideas as to who is responsible for the fitment issue, I forsee much finger pointing...and I'm really unsure myself which to contact about improving the fitment... both I guess

monkey man · Post by **monkey man** » Mon May 28, 2007 5:41 am

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My guess is it all comes down to Apple's in-house preacher, Pastor Buck.

me_gusto · Post by **me_gusto** » Tue May 29, 2007 4:21 pm

Misery loves company, so I'm glad I found you all.

Just lost communication to my 2408mk3 and my 24 I/O. What the heck?
My MAC Pro sees the 424 card as a valid I/O device, but the boxes are no longer getting sync, and the 424 won't appear as a hardware option in DP.

Aaarrggh!! Not like any of us are working under deadlines.
Gonna try moving the card to another PCIe slot.

monkey man · Post by **monkey man** » Wed May 30, 2007 7:07 am

me_gusto wrote:Misery loves company, so I'm glad I found you all.

Good luck, 'gusto, and welcome aboard!

I don't understand it; this sort of failure was almost unheard of until the 424e card appeared, and would invariably mean a faulty PCI card.
I'd love to see this situation revert to its previous non-eventful status soon, as I know I'll have to purchase the 424e card at some point.

Should the slot swap not yield a result, why not try resetting the P-RAM, along with running the usual maintenance cache-cleans and permissions reset?
The P-RAM reset is apparently most effective if you hold the key combination down through 3 chimes, then release.
I've forgotten the actual combination, so if someone wants to chime in here...

Failing the above, there remain the DP prefs to look at.
You could try temporarily removing them.

From one miserly, er, misery brotha to another, good luck, man.

MM

me_gusto · Post by **me_gusto** » Wed May 30, 2007 10:34 am

Well, the swap to another slot worked, but it's really touchy.
I regained sync to my I/O boxes until I pushed the computer back into
it's rack under my desk and then I lost it all again. (**sigh**)

I've finally got sync back, but I can't tighten the MAC PCIe card retainer bar all the way, (or push my computer back into it's space) as it seems any slight shift in position will cause the card to lose sync.

What's really strange is that it wasn't this touchy when I installed the whole lot. It's been working fine for a couple weeks. Seems it just suddenly got temperamental.

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 8:40 am

I've just now read this thread. I left my computer off for nearly a month, returning from vacation to find that the PCI424 card was acting up. In DP, it would cause the transport to jump in approximately 1 second intervals. ((See this thread for more details) Finally I traced it to the PCI 424 card. I've been having trouble with this card almost since the day I installed it. It will run fine for about a week, but then it loses connection with the Mac. I've found the only thing that consistently fixes it is to swap slots. It doesn't matter which slot I put it in, as long as it's a change from before so that the PCI manager will notice there's a "new card" in town, and attempt to hook up with it.

It will work generally for about a week, then it happens again. This time it didn't completely lose sync, but exhibited this troublesome pattern instead. I have not yet swapped slots to see if that fixes it. But I thought I'd chime into this thread, because most of the possible fixes i've read here do not ring true to me. This is a matter of something losing track of the card, and having to be tricked into recognizing it again. I don't know if it's a driver issue, or if it's the PCI manager on the motherboard, or some other software or hardware issue, but I don't think it's related to the board getting rocked in the slot. Mine never budges, and it happens anyway. I mean, there has to be force applied before such a thing can be budged, and there is no force being applied.

I don't know what is causing it, but I think either MOTU owes us a fix, or Apple owes us a fix. It's certainly not OUR fault. I'm very surprised that MOTU has not owned up to this problem. They should at least act like they've heard about it with as many people who have reported it. I'll probably report it again today or tomorrow. I did report it a couple of months ago. Now it's gone to this new behavior. I'll be interested to know if it's caused any damage to my 1296 and 2408mkII.

Shooshie

robstudio · Post by **robstudio** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 9:06 am

Hey Shooshie, that sucks... I have not reported my issue because I haven't had a connection loss (other than accidently bumping the f/w cable loose...). I will report it (the mechanical issue) though if it will help your (or anyone elses) cause, but I suspect this may be a different issue. Dang straight, somebody ought to figure this out and fix it asap... Yes we're dealing with some new technologies here, but certainly an admission to the problem is in order. I'm still in the honeymoon phase with my new setup and I think DP/MOTU/APPLE kick butt, but this ceratinly is an issue that needs attention. If we need to pester both for a solution, let me know, I'm in for as much as I can be, considering I'm not having an actual performance issue. Best of luck...
Regards, Rob

robstudio · Post by **robstudio** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 4:55 pm

There is another thread that has popped up about losing the whole card at the pcie bus. Seems to be two potential issues now. I really hope they sort this out... fast... any other common denominators in the systems here? I do not have any other pcei cards, I'm running a 2408 mkIII and a mkII. OS10.4.8 DP 5.1.2 - No issues, 3rd week.. (and counting..)... (no issues, with the computer that is ... ohh I have other issues alright, but, perhaps another time, and another place)

me_gusto · Post by **me_gusto** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 5:18 pm

The most enjoyable part of all this, is that I was told my call to MOTU tech support (about 2 weeks ago) regarding this issue was, ". . . the first [they'd] heard of such an error."

Uh huh.

I was told to open a TechLine report on the motu website. It sat unread for 6 days before I received a reply, which simply asked what my driver version was . . . even though I had included that information with the mandatory system info when I opened the request.

Sorry for the rant

pounce · Post by **pounce** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 8:17 pm

thought i'd mention something that may or may not be relevent.

on my secondary machine, which uses a m-audio card, i had a similar issue. at a certain point the computer just lost communication with the card. it turned out it actually was the driver going funny somehow, and reinstalling the software and repairing permissions and all of that made it better.

i did at first try moving the card around to another slot. that didn't change anything.

thought i'd mention it just in the off chance anyone exploring this issue just has driver/permissions issues and not a physical card issue. it's worth mentioning. as always, ymmv. it's just that i also had gotten an error message saying something about not finding an audio card which at first made me think the problem was worse than it was. after i reinstalled the driver and all that it's been working fine.

roblord · Post by **roblord** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 3:08 am

But the card is definately loose in the new Mac Pro and that can't be right can it?

Rob

pounce · Post by **pounce** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 7:17 am

if your card is physically loose than you already know what your problem is.

my pci424e is not loose in my machine.

faderboy · Post by **faderboy** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 10:49 pm

Okay so I installed the PCIe card in my Mac Pro in late January and have used it all day almost everyday since. No problems. Then today I turn the computer off for an hour and zilch - no hardware. Having been a bench tech for years I'd already put it in slot 2, quadruple checked for cable issues, flange depth and card clearance [always an issue with PCI/PCIe cards] and did all the tricks to tighten mine to the point of no movement when I first installed. Only way I got it to work was to drag everything in my extensions folder with MOTU in its name to the trash and re-installed.

The first thing any tech will say to get rid of you is something about cable seating. Granted the 424 is not made to the most exacting of standards but that is common. Seating is not the issue here, it is clearly to do with drivers, and it falls on MOTU to fix it since Apple is too busy giving us another OS to troubleshoot.

roblord · Post by **roblord** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:02 am

pounce wrote:if your card is physically loose than you already know what your problem is.

my pci424e is not loose in my machine.

Not really. There's no reason why the card is loose in my machine. I've certainly tightened it up enough and I've taken it out and re-seated it. I'm not one of the old school Mac people who doesn't like looking inside their machine. I come from a PC background and have been building my own machines for years. I think that there is something wrong with the Motu pcie cards construction - or the Mac Pro obviously. However from what you've said yours is fitting well so it obviously isn't the case with all of them. As I've said before though despite the loose seating of the card mine is working fine at the moment although I'd be worried if I had to plug/unplug the motu firewire cable too often.

Rob

Dave Bourke · Post by **Dave Bourke** » Fri Jun 22, 2007 1:55 pm

Had an interesting experience today. I installed a UAD-1e in slot 3 and when I booted the Mac Pro everything to do with audio had defaulted back to using Built-in. I never even touched the PCIe-424 in slot 2.

I wonder if the PCIe bus resets when you add another card?

And while I'm here, if you check out page 47 of the Mac Pro User's Guide, paragraph 4 reads: "To adjust the bandwidth of the PCI Express slots in your Mac Pro, use the Expansion Slot Utility, located in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder."

Except that there's no such utility anywhere on my machine according to Spotlight. Has anyone got this? Or know where I can get it?

Kind regards.

MOTUnation.com

MOTU 2408mkIII PCIe and Intel Mac Pro Connectivity Issues

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Lost PCIe & Hardware communication!