Picked up a used 828 MKII from marketplace to replace a presonus interface that stopped working. Unit had a bad backlight LED, and the meter/status LEDs were not functional, so I opened it up. Noticed that the large capacitor that sits behind the display board was bulged, and also the adjacent 5ohm resistors had burned up. I replaced the backlight LED and the capacitor, and the unit booted fine (backlight working too). Today the replacement 5ohm resistors were delivered and I replaced those. Now the unit boots directly to the "upgrade firmware" screen, and doesn't appear to be detected on the firewire bus. I've tried disconnecting/jumping the newly installed resistors, and pulling/reseating the firmware chip, but neither has any effect.
Have any of you ran in to this issue or similar and found a solution? Any known test points I can try? I've tried probing around a bit but I'm a bit lost without a schematic available.
828 MKII FW Issues / Repair
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Discussion related to installation, configuration and use of MOTU hardware such as MIDI interfaces, audio interfaces, etc. for Mac OSX
Discussion related to installation, configuration and use of MOTU hardware such as MIDI interfaces, audio interfaces, etc. for Mac OSX
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jamesbretz
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 9:57 am
- Primary DAW OS: MacOS
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mothra
- Posts: 334
- Joined: Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:01 pm
- Primary DAW OS: MacOS
- Location: Fontana, CA
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Re: 828 MKII FW Issues / Repair
Ahhh damn I had the flasher for firmware 1.01 but cleaned out all my MK2 stuff awhile back when I replaced it with an 828X. Sounds like it just needs to be reflashed.
If you search around you may be able to find it. The one that I had was a PowerPC application so it only works on Mac OS X, on a PPC Mac (G3/4/5/etc), so there is that. Maybe MOTU might still have it??
I seem to remember I found it in the same forum spot I found the instructions/Word Doc for replacing the LED backlight (I bought the first run of them with the bad backlight in it but didn't fix it until about 2012 or so)
If you search around you may be able to find it. The one that I had was a PowerPC application so it only works on Mac OS X, on a PPC Mac (G3/4/5/etc), so there is that. Maybe MOTU might still have it??
I seem to remember I found it in the same forum spot I found the instructions/Word Doc for replacing the LED backlight (I bought the first run of them with the bad backlight in it but didn't fix it until about 2012 or so)
M2 Pro Mini, macOS 14, MOTU 828x/Ferrofish Pulse 16, Cubase Pro/MPC
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jamesbretz
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 9:57 am
- Primary DAW OS: MacOS
Re: 828 MKII FW Issues / Repair
So after digging up an old macbook pro, wiping to snow leopard, and installing rosetta, I was able to run the firmware update executable. Unfortunately, it is outputting "Unknown bootloader version" and goes no further. So at the least, it is being detected on the firewire bus in firmware upgrade mode. Not sure what to try next. I also noticed when powering it up that one of the 5ohm resistors I replaced has already toasted itself again...