Multibridge Extreme PCIe problem

[Nate Owens]

Hello All! Just got back in the office this AM. On friday, I contacted BM tech support and after determining that I was still under the 3 year warranty (just barely!) they gave me an RMA to send the whole unit in for diagnosis. I will report back to this thread when I get the unit back and hopefully up and running again.

Nate

Nate Owens
Multi-Media Operations Manager
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

[Adam Levine]

Hi. I seem to be having much the same problem.

I’ve had a Multibridge Extreme in my G5 Quad since March, 2006. It’s always worked just fine all the way through when I pulled it out of the G5 yesterday to transfer to a Mac Pro (1st Gen) Quad Core that I got from a friend. The Mac Pro will not recognize the Multibridge no matter what I do. I have tried:

1) Reseating the card
2) Trying in Slots 3 and 4
3) Repeated uninstall/installs of drivers

I am running the 2nd config (16x, 1x, 4x, 4x) in the Expansion Slot Utility. There is a Sonnet E4P in slot 3.

Any thoughts on this or will this thing not work in a Mac Pro?

Adam Levine
Squeeze A Nickel Productions

[Marcia Kapustin]

Thanks Gene. I got back my multibridge from BlackMagic and they said that it was fine but needed the firmware to go back from standalone converter. Anyway, when I popped it in, it worked (recognized slot 4) and was fine for about 6 hours. Then the fan revved up like a motorcycle (revving up and down and up and down) and after that it just continuously crashed my Final Cut. I have sent an email back to the BlackMagic folks (who were very fast in responding and sent an RMA quickly – thanks!), and awaiting their next response. Adam, Hopefully this way helps to wake up your slot 4.

Marcia

Re: Multibridge Extreme PCIe problem
by Gene Colburn on Jan 19, 2009 at 8:57:44 pm

Log on as Administrator go to HD>System>Library>Core Services and you should be able to open the Expansion Slot Utility. Setup slot 4 for 4 lane, and everything should work. You might need a cold reboot after change before it will initialize.
One caveat here would be if you have a couple of 16 lane PCIe graphics cards installed in your workstation that would be hogging all express lane resources. If so the Multibridge will never work in that con

[Adam Levine]

Is there a way to force a firmware update on this thing? I thought it was just automatic when new firmware was available. Can a factory restore be performed?

Adam Levine
Squeeze A Nickel Productions

[Nate Owens]

Hi All! When all was said and done, BM sent us a new BME box. They said my PCIe card was fine but there was a problem with the box itself. Adam, if you can, try to contact BM at their # on the website. It may take awhile to get through but they are very responsive to questions (at least with me!) Good luck, Nate

Nate Owens
Multi-Media Operations Manager
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

[Adam Levine]

I was able to fix the problem:

Shutdown
Pull all cards but video card
Startup
Login as root
Make ESU chages
Restart
Shutdown
Put cards back
Startup

Everything’s good now.

Adam Levine
Squeeze A Nickel Productions