MasterLink Help!

[dgrieser]

It looked like swapping out my original 4 gig hard drive would be something easy to do and it was. But it didn't like my MasterLink OS disk that I made following the directions on the Alesis site. Then it said Fatal Error, CD Error 277. Then HDCD to Reset, CD Reset Failure. I took the new hard drive out and put the old one back in. Same thing. I tried holding down Play and Record when turning on the MasterLink to reset it. Still the same errors. Did my CD drive just take a crap on me or am just totally screwed? Anybody know what's going on with this, have any similar error messages you've solved? I've emailed support at Alesis but don't expect to hear from them for some time. Thanks to anyone who can help.

[inverseroom]

Did you try making another OS disk? It sounds like the OS file was corrupted and got in there and now nothing works...just try it again and see if it will boot the new disc.

Pardon me if you've already done this...

[dgrieser]

Well, I got it working. I figured there could only be so many combinations of the positions of the jumpers to try, and one of them might work. I finally got the CD drive working by putting the jumper on Master. But it wouldn't use any of the MasterLink OS disks I made on my Mac. I put the old 4 gig drive in, it didn't have a jumper on it, and it fired right up like nothing had changed. So there must be a problem with ISO disks burned on Macs and the MasterLink even though Alesis says you can do it. I'm going to try to get my local Alesis dealer to get me an OS disk from Alesis and then see if I can get the bigger drive to work.

Boy am I glad to have it back in working order.

Thanks for the suggestion. It got me to jump back in and try some things before sending it off for repair.

[Kevin Kitchel]

Well, I got it working. I figured there could only be so many combinations of the positions of the jumpers to try, and one of them might work. I finally got the CD drive working by putting the jumper on Master. But it wouldn't use any of the MasterLink OS disks I made on my Mac. I put the old 4 gig drive in, it didn't have a jumper on it, and it fired right up like nothing had changed. So there must be a problem with ISO disks burned on Macs and the MasterLink even though Alesis says you can do it. I'm going to try to get my local Alesis dealer to get me an OS disk from Alesis and then see if I can get the bigger drive to work.

Boy am I glad to have it back in working order.

Thanks for the suggestion. It got me to jump back in and try some things before sending it off for repair.

Never had a problem with discs burned from a Mac using Disk Utility. I think the IDE drives are on their own controllers, so they should be set to master (cannot verify this). Also, I thought that ML-9600s didn't like drives that were larger than 32 GB formatted. You may need to use the jumpers on your drive to limit it to that size. Most Seagate drives allow for this.

Also, when upgrading the drive, just use a 5400 RPM drive, not a 7200! The 5400 is cooler and more quiet, with plenty of speed to spare.

[dgrieser]

My MasterLink has an older eprom--1.21-- and in order to accept the newer OS system disc and bigger disk drives, it needs eprom 1.27. So anybody know how hard it is to replace the eprom chip? I guess it's on the motherboard. Anybody done this?

The eprom version can be found in the Utilities menu. Better know it if you're buying one used.

[honkyjonk]

It's very easy to replace the eprom chip.

Its just pull out the old one, plug in the new one. No soldering involved. I forget where it was, but I replaced it at one point.

I imagine alesis would send you one for free. They did for me.

I'm surprised you were able to fix the "fatal error" problem. I've had two different masterlinks that did that, probably about five times between them, and each time the only thing that solved it was replacing the hard drive. I even sent it back to alesis one time only to have it return working and then the power supply was fried within 40 minutes of use.

I'll never use a masterlink again if I can avoid it. I guess they've been A okay for a lot of people, but nothing but problems for me.

On the bright side, there's a guy at alesis named Robert Ray. I think his email is robertray at alesis.com. This guy is the absolute standard by which all customer service should be compared. He's hooked me up with free repairs for alesis stuff I bought used, w/ no warranty, about three different times. Sometimes even with free shipping to and from alesis. Crazy. You don't get that kind of service with a big company. The only thing is, you have to contact only him. Don't even mess around with anybody else at Alesis.