MOTU 896 Driver Keeps Disappearing in Vista

[drewwiseman]

Greetings,

I have an orginal MOTU 896 which I am running with Sonar Producer 8.0.2.319 version. My PC has the following specs:
*ASUS K8V SE motherboard
*Windows Vista Ultimate SP1
*AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3000+ 2.00 GHz
*2.50 GB RAM
*32-bit Operating System

I've been having an issue where my 896 runs fine when powered up and after a period of time (1hr+?) the device looses connection and I can see on my PC that the audio driver is gone. Rebooting the 896 does not solve the problem. I contacted MOTU support (very slow to respond) and they advised me that the problem was probably my firewire card which was an internal VIA. I did some research and purchased a Pyro PCI 64R2 firewire card. I installed the card and did notice some better performance but it did not solve this "timeout" issue where my driver dissapears. I have the latest driver from the Motu site which is the Firewire/USB 32fw-3.6.8.1394 driver. The only way for me to get this working again is to shut everything down and wait a while. I also did some futher testing and discovered that I don't have to even launch any software to encounter this problem. I power up my MOTU 896, confirm that the driver is visible and working, and then 1.5-2 hours later it's gone from audio devices. It almost seems like a component is overheating, timing out or something but I really am at a loss. Could this be bios related? Vista related? I don't ever remember having this problem with XP. Some have suggested that this is a power settings issue but I have my PC set to "high performance" - power always on, and I see no other power related setting.

Can anyone help me here? I'm pretty much dead in the water until I can figure this out. I would really appreciate any advice.
Thanks so much,

Drew

[drewwiseman]

OK - I've narrowed this problem down somewhat. The issue is definitely with my MOTU 896. I removed all connection from my PC and simply plugged the 896 into the wall and powered it up. At power up, the meters do the "meter dance thing" and then the unit's clock led lights up solid, indicating the device is ready. If I power down the device in the next few minutes, and power back up, the same sequence of events occurs and all looks well. However, if I leave the device on for an period of time (1 hour for example), at some point a component seems to overheat or malfunction. The reason I know this is because if I then cycle the power, the 896 does not do it's usual "meter dance thing" and instead the clock led light is no longer solid - it is immediately flashing. repeated power cycles show the same thing. The only way to reset the device is to power it down for 30 mins or so. Then the whole process starts over. This also explains why when I did the same test with the firewire cable connected, at the moment the clock led starts blinking, the device is no longer available in my device drivers.

I popped the cover and obviously the fuse looks fine but I see nothing else wrong. Of course, I'm not really sure what else to look for here. But I do think something has gone awry inside the device.
Any thoughts or ideas? I've had this unit since it 1st came out so it's way out of warranty.

Thanks,
Drew