Allen & Heath Zed R-16 Firewire not working

[mrscary]

I have a Zed R-16 and the firewire just stopped working, for no reason whatsoever. The only thing I did was I unplugged the cable to use for something else, and when I plugged it back in, the board doesn't come up on m computer anymore. All other functions work fine, including the Adat I/O.

I took it apart and everything looks fine, no damaged caps or anything. The red light near the connectors lights up when plugged into the computer. My mac says "can't list firewire devices" under system profiler.

Does anyone know anything about these boards and their firewire issues?

[Nick Sevilla]

Did you do a hard reboot of everything?

You did not mention this in your post.

[mrscary]

What do you mean hard reboot?

Board as well as computer were shut down and unplugged. It doesn't show up on both my computers or bootcamp. Unplugging the firewire cable once was the only thing I ever did to the board since I've had it, besides plugging in mics from time to time.

[agershon]

I'm flying pretty blind here, but the fact that your computer won't list any firewire devices makes me thing the problem is ITB, so to speak.

Try repairing permissions in disk utility and then reboot, making sure the board is connected and turned on.

[Nick Sevilla]

I'm flying pretty blind here, but the fact that your computer won't list any firewire devices makes me thing the problem is ITB, so to speak.

Try repairing permissions in disk utility and then reboot, making sure the board is connected and turned on.

+1

[mrscary]

I'm currently using an M-Audio Lightbridge on firewire with the Zed's opto converters. It's actually much more stable than the Zed ever was. I also use FW drives etc...

The "Cant list FW devices" came up with only the Zed and nothing else plugged in

[kayagum]

Dumb question: did you flip the switch back to Firewire from the ADAT switch? (the switch further away from the Firewire input jacks)(See page 24 on the Users Guide). I'm betting you have it set for ADAT instead of Firewire (especially since you were using the Lightbridge).

Oh, and one other crucial thing you need to do: AFTER you flip the switch, you have to turn off the mixing board, and turn it back on. In effect: a cold reboot of the board itself. The switch won't change it on the fly.

Don't ask me why I would suggest it. I'll give you a hint- I own and use a ZED R-16 myself....

[mrscary]

Switch was in FW mode for all tests. I have tried three different machines, four operating systems, three firewire cables. All of the above works fine with other FW devices.

I was wondering if anyone had encountered this problem and the solution ended up being a couple of bad capacitors etc

[Snarl 12/8]

I gotta ask, did you contact A&H about this?

Edit: and/or the store where you bought it?

[mrscary]

I bought the board used from Guitar Center a couple of years ago.

I contacted A&H service centers, it's going to cost at least 300 to fix. I know a lot of people are having FW issues with the unit. Figured if it was a simple enough fix, maybe I could do it myself.

I'm using this incident as an excuse to upgrade anyway so I don't mind playing around with the insides of the board

[Nate Dort]

You've seen this, right?

Zed R16 Firewire ground fix

Very simple repair. Might not fix your issue, but it's probably worth a try.

I bought a factory refurbished R16 about two months ago and it's been rock-solid for me.