2nd rate service from presonus

[eeb]

So turns out Canadiens don't get the same support from presonus as americans do. My firepod as i had previously posted about, crapped out on me and presonus usually (well from what i've been told) will fix it for around 95$ plus shipping on a unit that the warranty expired on. Sounds great... not for me.. they won't touch it and send me to another company in canada to fix it. They took about a week to get back to me and now I have to pay 90$ an hour PLUS PARTS and they won't evan give me any clue at all how much anything will cost... oh and shipping too but that's normal..

that's it for me and presonus i think... I was hoping to fix my pod and sell it but i don't wanna send it out to find out it cost me 300$ because i doubt I'd get much more than 300$ for a used firepod anyway...


grrrr sorry for the rant

on a positive note i got a delta 1010 and a Yamaha MG124FX 12-Channel Mixer.. and from what i hear I can use 2 channels from my firepod as stand alone pre's... so at least i'm back in business

 

[JuliánFernández]

So turns out Canadiens don't get the same support from presonus as americans do. My firepod as i had previously posted about, crapped out on me and presonus usually (well from what i've been told) will fix it for around 95$ plus shipping on a unit that the warranty expired on. Sounds great... not for me.. they won't touch it and send me to another company in canada to fix it. They took about a week to get back to me and now I have to pay 90$ an hour PLUS PARTS and they won't evan give me any clue at all how much anything will cost... oh and shipping too but that's normal..

that's it for me and presonus i think... I was hoping to fix my pod and sell it but i don't wanna send it out to find out it cost me 300$ because i doubt I'd get much more than 300$ for a used firepod anyway...


grrrr sorry for the rant

on a positive note i got a delta 1010 and a Yamaha MG124FX 12-Channel Mixer.. and from what i hear I can use 2 channels from my firepod as stand alone pre's... so at least i'm back in business

Sorry about that... good news is you can use all 8 pres (with new firmware) as stand alone pres!

 

[eeb]

ahh not true..

the firepod needs to be functional to run the firmware update right?

I know i can use input 1 and 2 as it is.. and if i'm wrong it would be wonderful... but since my firepod won't sync up to the computer I can't see any way the update will work

 

[JuliánFernández]

Well, if you didn´t upgrade the firmware, the no... you can´t use it as a stand alone device...

If you´re using the new firmware, you can use the 8 pres without a computer (i did)...

Why don´t you email Presouns, maybe they can tell you how to use it as a stand alone unit?

 

[dgatwood]

ahh not true..

the firepod needs to be functional to run the firmware update right?

I know i can use input 1 and 2 as it is.. and if i'm wrong it would be wonderful... but since my firepod won't sync up to the computer I can't see any way the update will work

Have you tried both FireWire ports? They're on separate PHY ports (and maybe separate PHYs), so if a port on the PHY blew out, it should only affect one of them in all likelihood. If they are both dead, it's probably the PHY fuse. I'm sure it's soldered on the board, but if you know somebody who can do surface mount soldering, it should take all of a minute and a half to repair it.

It should be marked on the board as a fuse in some way, and it will look like a little rectangle with a contact on both ends, somewhere near the PHY (which itself should be about a 1/4"x1/4" black silicon chip with about a dozen pins on all four sides... maybe slightly larger). It should be the only square IC within an inch or so of the FireWire jacks and with connections directly to it.

The PHY fuse will probably be in the middle of a trace between the PHY and the jack. If the fuse is bad, it should be trivial to test it with a cheap ohm tester, as it isn't in the middle of any sort of circuit that could give a false positive. If that is the problem, and if you choose to replace it, I would suggest replacing it with a self-resetting (often called self-healing) fuse.

FireWire PHY:

From http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/print.php?cid=6&id=867

That might not be the particular PHY that they used, but they all look pretty much like that, AFAIK. Note that the photo above is greatly enlarged... by somewhere between a factor of two and three.

Of course, the company that Presonus contracts out will probably just pull it open, swap the main board, put it back together five minutes later, and charge you an hour's labor....