ButsisAroma
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A Real Solution to the 2488 MKII freezing problem
Not Just Sticky Buttons - the cheezy wiring harness is also a culprit
I created this post because I had trouble with this unit - trouble that is easily corrected. I can only imagine folks panicking and dumping this thing over the design flaws, and other issues found with it.
I purchased this 2488 MKII unit from ebay at a bargain. I suspected something was wrong with it due to its price point but decided I'd buy it anyway. The price was around $300 (at the time) shipped so I was quite positive the seller was less than forthcoming.
My suspicions were correct; after turning the unit on and deleting a bunch of songs recorded by the seller, the unit started the typical freezing and locking up that I had read about over and over on the net.
The things that also told me this was a known faulty unit; it was packed with a ton of cables and jacks, close to 250 dollars worth of new audio cables which purchased alone would cost a small fortune. Nice addition, perhaps a guilty conscience on seller's part.
No matter, I decided to keep and try to repair this unit and not even bother the seller.
The unit was obviously in storage for at least a year or more, and smelled like rat pee and poo. The evidence was in the bottom of the original box. Not slamming the seller at all but the story was spelled out:
1. About 30 songs were recorded on the unit. Full projects and cover tunes, etc.
2. Seller started having trouble with the unit - unit is still in pristine cosmetic condition
3. Replaced the unit with something else and this one got canned
4. Seller is needing money and cleans out attic and sells this on ebay
5. Seller sells faulty item not knowing what is wrong with it hoping it will all just magically "go away"
6. Engineer me buys unit - suspecting there are issues but helplessly unable to resist the lure of ebay
7. Engineer me fixes unit, thereby owning a sweet piece of hardware at a fraction of
its value. And I got an expensive lot of cable swag to boot.
Why all of this back story? I mainly want to help someone else avoid the trouble I had and perhaps help correct any problems with their MKII or similar unit.
Not one to forego a good problem I decided I would investigate. I put it aside for awhile and started doing research on this unit. The following caveats made it a pretty interesting research project. To date I have listed the following items found that these units are notorious for:
1. Sticy buttons
2. Sticky jog wheel
3. Inferior metals in the buttons
4. Freezing
5. Locking up
6. Drive Corruption
7. Various Gremlins
8. Wiring Harness issues
The Problem:
Freezes Up
I tackled this one first off by eliminating one issue found right away on ebay. The issue with sticky buttons was easily remedied using Deoxit, which I found an aerosol two pack at the local Radio Shack.
I sprayed the buttons with Deoxit (not Stabilant) and worked them as suggested elsewhere:
While this did fix a few sticky buttons the problem kept cropping up again and again where the unit exhibited these symptoms:
1. During recording or playback unit freezes
2. The button LEDs on the mixer extinguish
3. The buttons light up again seemingly at random when a button is pressed or unit is tapped
4. The MENU and NEXT and all of the other buttons cease to function (e.g. one button calls another)
5. Controls are completely unresponsive but unit is still active counting up via timer.
At this point I have determined that there is a ghost in the machine. A gremlin if you will, a crazy intermittent problem. Over the years working on radar transmitters and in manufacturing I have discovered that hardware ghosts and gremlins are generally attributed to poorly mated connectors, cold solder joints and that sort of thing.
Armed with this knowledge I turned the unit off and on again and began tapping. Knowing that the hard drive was spinning did nothing to assuage my constant tapping on the unit. I figured at this point I could do no more harm since it would not work anyway.
After tapping I found that I could get the buttons to flash on and off intermittently. So I kept tapping at key spots on the unit until I found the place I could repeat the fault. Bingo, I found it at the bottom of the master fader. So I got the bright idea to apply hard finger pressure here. The intermittent lights and buttons now came on steady but would go out when I released finger pressure. I did this over and over and when I found out that this indeed was the location I decided to go deeper.
I disassembled the unit in accordance with instructions found via Google search.
Then I started inspecting the unit around the bottom of the fader I pointed out. I began to assume that this was an open power connection of some sort. After inspecting the flimsy connectors and seeing the mechanical strain the tie wrap had the small cable in I was convinced of connection problems.
I wiggled the connector and applied pressure to it and reseated it. Then I moved the tie wrap to a less binding location. I reseated every connector as best I could without removing it and rearranged any wires that looked like they may be touching. Many of the connectors were cocked to one side and showed signs of what I call "creep." When a unit sits for a long time the hot/cold hot/cold wet/dry action of our universe tends to make stuff creep out of place, sort of like repeatedly bending a coat hanger makes it eventually heat up and break.
I reassembled the unit and haven't had a single freeze up problem since.
NOTE: Anything done in this post by you assumes you take full responsibilty for your actions. I will not be liable for void warranties, injury, shock, or damage to your unit or anything else. I am a trained electronics & controls engineer with over 30 years of experience troubleshooting these types of issues. You were warned.
------------
To test your unit do the following:
1. If it freezes during recording
a. use Deoxit FIRST to eliminate the sticky button issue
b. if LEDs go out, try tapping at various spots to get them to come on again (like at bottom or
middle of master fader)
c. if you have luck or even if you don't try opening the unit and do a visual inspection
d. inspect all small white cables and connectors and make sure they are seated by wiggling them
e. wiggle the wires and push them around so they aren't demated
f. if you see any wires that look strained or pulled too hard by a tie wrap, loosen the tension
by moving the tie wrap
g. with any luck you should be able to get your unit functioning again just by fiddling with
wire positon. The pin size on these connectors is tiny, therefore any sort of strain or
distortion can make a poor or intermittent connection.
NOTE: A dead giveaway to this harness problem is a unit with all LED's out and non responsive or intermittent controls.
Not Just Sticky Buttons - the cheezy wiring harness is also a culprit
I created this post because I had trouble with this unit - trouble that is easily corrected. I can only imagine folks panicking and dumping this thing over the design flaws, and other issues found with it.
I purchased this 2488 MKII unit from ebay at a bargain. I suspected something was wrong with it due to its price point but decided I'd buy it anyway. The price was around $300 (at the time) shipped so I was quite positive the seller was less than forthcoming.
My suspicions were correct; after turning the unit on and deleting a bunch of songs recorded by the seller, the unit started the typical freezing and locking up that I had read about over and over on the net.
The things that also told me this was a known faulty unit; it was packed with a ton of cables and jacks, close to 250 dollars worth of new audio cables which purchased alone would cost a small fortune. Nice addition, perhaps a guilty conscience on seller's part.
No matter, I decided to keep and try to repair this unit and not even bother the seller.
The unit was obviously in storage for at least a year or more, and smelled like rat pee and poo. The evidence was in the bottom of the original box. Not slamming the seller at all but the story was spelled out:
1. About 30 songs were recorded on the unit. Full projects and cover tunes, etc.
2. Seller started having trouble with the unit - unit is still in pristine cosmetic condition
3. Replaced the unit with something else and this one got canned
4. Seller is needing money and cleans out attic and sells this on ebay
5. Seller sells faulty item not knowing what is wrong with it hoping it will all just magically "go away"
6. Engineer me buys unit - suspecting there are issues but helplessly unable to resist the lure of ebay
7. Engineer me fixes unit, thereby owning a sweet piece of hardware at a fraction of
its value. And I got an expensive lot of cable swag to boot.
Why all of this back story? I mainly want to help someone else avoid the trouble I had and perhaps help correct any problems with their MKII or similar unit.
Not one to forego a good problem I decided I would investigate. I put it aside for awhile and started doing research on this unit. The following caveats made it a pretty interesting research project. To date I have listed the following items found that these units are notorious for:
1. Sticy buttons
2. Sticky jog wheel
3. Inferior metals in the buttons
4. Freezing
5. Locking up
6. Drive Corruption
7. Various Gremlins
8. Wiring Harness issues
The Problem:
Freezes Up
I tackled this one first off by eliminating one issue found right away on ebay. The issue with sticky buttons was easily remedied using Deoxit, which I found an aerosol two pack at the local Radio Shack.
I sprayed the buttons with Deoxit (not Stabilant) and worked them as suggested elsewhere:
While this did fix a few sticky buttons the problem kept cropping up again and again where the unit exhibited these symptoms:
1. During recording or playback unit freezes
2. The button LEDs on the mixer extinguish
3. The buttons light up again seemingly at random when a button is pressed or unit is tapped
4. The MENU and NEXT and all of the other buttons cease to function (e.g. one button calls another)
5. Controls are completely unresponsive but unit is still active counting up via timer.
At this point I have determined that there is a ghost in the machine. A gremlin if you will, a crazy intermittent problem. Over the years working on radar transmitters and in manufacturing I have discovered that hardware ghosts and gremlins are generally attributed to poorly mated connectors, cold solder joints and that sort of thing.
Armed with this knowledge I turned the unit off and on again and began tapping. Knowing that the hard drive was spinning did nothing to assuage my constant tapping on the unit. I figured at this point I could do no more harm since it would not work anyway.
After tapping I found that I could get the buttons to flash on and off intermittently. So I kept tapping at key spots on the unit until I found the place I could repeat the fault. Bingo, I found it at the bottom of the master fader. So I got the bright idea to apply hard finger pressure here. The intermittent lights and buttons now came on steady but would go out when I released finger pressure. I did this over and over and when I found out that this indeed was the location I decided to go deeper.
I disassembled the unit in accordance with instructions found via Google search.
Then I started inspecting the unit around the bottom of the fader I pointed out. I began to assume that this was an open power connection of some sort. After inspecting the flimsy connectors and seeing the mechanical strain the tie wrap had the small cable in I was convinced of connection problems.
I wiggled the connector and applied pressure to it and reseated it. Then I moved the tie wrap to a less binding location. I reseated every connector as best I could without removing it and rearranged any wires that looked like they may be touching. Many of the connectors were cocked to one side and showed signs of what I call "creep." When a unit sits for a long time the hot/cold hot/cold wet/dry action of our universe tends to make stuff creep out of place, sort of like repeatedly bending a coat hanger makes it eventually heat up and break.
I reassembled the unit and haven't had a single freeze up problem since.
NOTE: Anything done in this post by you assumes you take full responsibilty for your actions. I will not be liable for void warranties, injury, shock, or damage to your unit or anything else. I am a trained electronics & controls engineer with over 30 years of experience troubleshooting these types of issues. You were warned.
------------
To test your unit do the following:
1. If it freezes during recording
a. use Deoxit FIRST to eliminate the sticky button issue
b. if LEDs go out, try tapping at various spots to get them to come on again (like at bottom or
middle of master fader)
c. if you have luck or even if you don't try opening the unit and do a visual inspection
d. inspect all small white cables and connectors and make sure they are seated by wiggling them
e. wiggle the wires and push them around so they aren't demated
f. if you see any wires that look strained or pulled too hard by a tie wrap, loosen the tension
by moving the tie wrap
g. with any luck you should be able to get your unit functioning again just by fiddling with
wire positon. The pin size on these connectors is tiny, therefore any sort of strain or
distortion can make a poor or intermittent connection.
NOTE: A dead giveaway to this harness problem is a unit with all LED's out and non responsive or intermittent controls.
