Firepod and FP10 question

Hey y'all,

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, I couldn't find the one specific to FP10 or Firepod.

I have an FP10 and a Firepod. I've had them linked before, we made a record on it and everything was groovy. Since then I've formatted the machine (HP Pavilion, Win XP, 4Gb RAM, dual AMD 3600+) and am trying to get them linked again.

After a lot of uninstalling/reinstalling/forum searching, I'm at the point where the FP10 works, but I can't get the Firepod to respond (red light). During one phase or another of this dance, I did have the Firepod working (blue light) with the FP10 driver, but not linked, so I proceeded device managering/uninstalling/updating, etc. Now it's just red.

Here's the odd thing: In the FP10 driver control panel, the FP10 shows up with a standard serial #, and the Firepod shows up as well - with a serial number of 0000000000000000. My question is; should I try and upgrade the firmware on the Firepod to FP10 again? (If so, should I use those links from the only other thread I found, since the upgrade apparently isn't hosted on presonus.com?)

Thank you!

Have you tried this?
http://www.presonus.com/support/downloads/FireBox

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 16/03/2013 20:44:11

I don't understand what use the Firebox drivers would be for this issue gadget? I would suggest that the
OP should indeed upgrade the Firepod to FP10 status. In fact, I'm really surprised that he was ever able
to get an original Firepod and FP10 to link.....everything I've read and my own experience tells me that
they must both be Firepods OR FP10's. I have a Firepod that I upgraded....then I got a second one. I
could not get them to sync together until I upgraded that one as well. In any case joetvpresonus here's
the link to the instructions and files to perform the upgrade....please note that this MUST be performed
on a Win XP machine!

http://www.coopersloan.com/index.php?id=8&mode=s&len=2

Good point...just talkin out my butex I guess

Thanks that actually (mostly) worked! I didn't even think about the Firebox driver, but The Firepod now has a blue light and I'm able to record. Furthermore I can link it to the FP10 and we're all ready to rock.

However . . .

First, just to clarify, I had upgraded the Firepod before - a few years ago - and that's how I first got them to link up. That was back using Cubase LE.

Anyway, I normally login as a user with admin rights, but for this I logged in as Administrator and installed the Firebox driver. (don't know if it's relevant but:, everything being everything.) The Firepod lit up blue and so I connected the FP10 back in, and it also lit up blue. So far so good.

Strangely enough the FP10 control panel shows the Firepod (now with actual serial#), the other FP10 - and the old Firepod instance with all zeros for serial. (Is that ok?) At any rate, ready to fire up StudioOne and get to it. Only - d'oh - it only sees the 10 inputs from the FP10. I went to Audio Setup, see the Firebox driver, try to load it and it says the driver . .. couldn't be initialized or started or something. Close, reboot, retry, same thing. Connected the Firepod/FP10s separately, linked, rebooted, tried Administrator login, rebooted again - no luck, I only get the FP10 inputs. Blue lights on both though.

So, before I report back that it didn't work, I connect the Firepod to the FP10, the FP10 in to the Firewire port, and decided to try the old Cubase LE and - huh - they're all there. All 20 inputs. So I create a new song and record and everything works fine! But . . . but we're moving to StudioOne so . . .it . . uh . . .huh.

? Any thoughts? If worse comes to worse I can do the drums in Cubase and import them over but that would so not rock.

Thanks again.

Arg.

Well - it worked for at least one session. The problem is/was that in the course of all the driver install/uninstall etc. I somehow hosed my LAN driver. It's built into the mobo so it took me forever and a day to find the actual nvidia files I needed. The good news, is the studio box is now online and happily registering and updating StudioOne etc.

But the Firepod has decided it's not going to play anymore. And the Firebox drivers didn't do it this time. The FP10, as usual, is happy and working fine. I had upgraded the Firepod to an FP10 a long time ago, but thought - maybe it needed to be upgraded again? Couldn't hurt - but it threw an error and that was that.

I tried the old Firepod drivers, the new Firepod/FP10 drivers, the Firebox drivers, linked, separate, boot, reboot, uninstall, update driver, scan for hardware changes, etc. Nothing but a red light.

Is there any diagnostic I can do to see what's up with the Firepod? It seemed to work fine last Tuesday. The only thing that changed was (possibly) the chipset drivers and/or definitely the LAN ethernet driver.

thank you!

OHCI report:

OS: Microsoft Windows XP 32-bit Professional Service Pack 3 [5.1.2600]

Looking for OHCI 1394 Host Controllers...

1:
Vendor : (11C1) LSI (Agere, Lucent)
Chipset: (5811) FW321/FW322/FW323
Revision: 70
Details:
Subsysten VendorId: 103c
Subsystem DeviceId: 2a34
Max # isoch Rx contexts: 8
Max # isoch Tx contexts: 8
Support: Compatible, no known issues.
SidSpeed: S400

Done.

Request #118581 created.

rtf attached to that ticket showing the device-by-type that says the OHCI IEEE 1394 host controller doesn't have any conflicts.

Nothin'? Somethin'? Anyone? Beuller?

Gt to give them some time. They will get back to you. If they haven't after a few days, please let us know.

Thanks, they did. They think its likely the chipset driver changes which is fair enough, I just don't know what would be different about the chipset drivers between the FP10 that works fine and the FP10 that doesn't.

I thought I could just plug it into my Mac, but the Mac has a 4 pin FireWire port, and all I have are 6 pin cables. I looked at $35 for a new FireWire cable or $15 for an adapter, which I'd have to order online as the local store doesn't carry them

Then I remembered an old box with a FireWire card in it, so my new plan is to load that up and see if it fixes it. If not, I'll just wipe &restore XP. If that doesn't do it - well, I'll get there if I get there I guess.

Thanks!

Someone will be here for you.

Plugged in a 3-port FireWire card, it recognized the card no problem.

The recognized FP10 plugged into new card, works fine. Still no luck with the other one. But I realized I had them both plugged into the card, when I meant to link them. Ran 2nd port of working FP10 to 1st port of the other. No luck. (This is all powering off and waiting now, I'm not like randomly pulling cables or anything)

Just to try it I plugged the 2nd port of the working one into the second port of the other. Then they both had red lights.

Hm. Power down, reboot, no, uninstall reboot reinstall - no. What th? Now they BOTH show red??

Ai. That's going backwards. So - I'm planning to format C and start over unless there's a better idea first.

Thanks.

I may have missed it but have you tried all ports and all available cables with the one that doesn't play nice?

This really sounds like hardware failure.

I did try all the available ports, and I used the power/fw cable from the one that works fine. But no luck. So I took the box to a different room, wiped it & resinstalled XP, with nothing else loaded but the FP10 drivers. However, the problem FP10 still has a red light, the working FP10 is fine.

As a last-ditch attempt I connected it to an entirely different system but no love. Just the red light. (It starts blue, turns red, then briefly flashes blue before staying on red).

So I updated my ticket as such, I'm guessing a repair is the only option. I was looking at other products, but it seems like everything from Firestudio to 1818VSL etc wouldn't do what this gives us, namely linking to the FP10 for 16 total analog tracks simultaneously. Is there any other solution than just fixing/replacing the FP10?

thank you!