alesis multimix firewire, drops out!

dmuben

New member
hi,
i recently purchased an alesis multimix 8 firewire second hand ( as they are no longer manufactured).
i have a reoccuring problem which is that after it has been on for a while, it will suddenly just 'drop out' and the computer thinks it's not connected. the device is still on and all plugged in but it no longer is communicating with the computer.
i have tried re-installing the driver and i have tried both firewire ports at the rear of the device.
has anyone else experienced this? and is there a known solution.
or was this the reason it was discontinued?
 
3 thoughts:

a) Try another firewire cable; the cable or the plugs may be bad.

b) What firewire chipset is in your computer. Cheap firewire chips can can devices to not be recognized. You ONLY want to use TexasInstruments firewire chipsets in an audio/video computer even if it means buying another firewire card. (You can find out in your Device Manager Control Panel - it should say something like "IEE-1394a Texas Instruments...."

c) The second-hand unit may be faulty. Work on a) and b) first....
 
3 thoughts:

a) Try another firewire cable; the cable or the plugs may be bad.

b) What firewire chipset is in your computer. Cheap firewire chips can can devices to not be recognized. You ONLY want to use TexasInstruments firewire chipsets in an audio/video computer even if it means buying another firewire card. (You can find out in your Device Manager Control Panel - it should say something like "IEE-1394a Texas Instruments...."

c) The second-hand unit may be faulty. Work on a) and b) first....

thanks for replying. i have tried a different cable on my laptop which has the texas instruments ieee1394 chip and it behaves slightly differently in that it drops out and then returns while i'm playing a track, it doesn't disconnect fully, although i can't be sure it won't do that as i need to leave it a while.
i emailed the guy who sold it me and he reassures me that it was not faulty when he had it, he also recommended changing the buffer size, although it has made no difference. also the laptop uses windows vista and he computer i want to use it on has windows 7, if there is any relevance.
 
Changing buffer sizes certainly wouldn't help with a dropped connection, so he's immediately suspicious.

Are you using the most up-to-date drivers from the Alesis website?
MultiMix 8 FireWire

I see there is a firmware update there too; I would apply that (carefully read any instructions on updating the firmware... that can sometimes be tricky.)
 
Firewire card makes a massive difference.

I was using it on my laptop with a 4pin firewire and getting drop-outs every 20 seconds or so.

Tried a Belkin firewire card (an old one) in my desktop pc and still didn't work properly.........Borrowed a friends new firewire card and works perfectly.
 
Have you had any luck with this since you posted?

I'm having the same issue. I've had the card and mixer for a while. I'd switched driver's (and by the way, my windows xp PC did not like the newest drivers at all). I now rolled back to the march 2008 drivers which had served me well for years, but I am still getting times when the alesis is not getting recognized. I just tried switching physical ports in back of the firewire card and I'll see what happens
 
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