E-mu 1616m MicroDock repair

[AndreyS]

Hi. I have two MicroDocks from E-mu: one is working, another is not. It turns on, but is not recognized by the PCIe card. Normally, after turning on LEDs light on, MicroDock gets recognized by PCIe card and its LEDs turn off. Since MicroDock doesn't get recognized, LEDs stay on.

I checked voltages, and they are same as on the working MicroDock.

Has anybody faced this problem? How to fix it?

[Smith]

Could it be a bad EEPROM? I had a similar issue with a  Audiophonics U-Sabre mini USB DAC I bought a few months ago (I new it was bad). Seller told it would sometimes be found by the PC, but other times it would not. When I got it, it would never be found on any of my machines. I used the Thesycon USB descriptor tool (free on the interweb) and saw one of the endpoints was screwed because its length was 0xFF (instead of 0x09, which I found out afterwards). I knew from a similar device the descriptor should have the length 0x09. Turned out the USB controller (the SA9023 in my case) had 2 similar EEPROMS, for unknown reason. De-soldered both  and read them in my TL866. One had the description length of 0x09, the other had 0xFF. The rest of the data was exactly the same, so with the prior knowledge I was quite sure this was the issue. I flashed the bad one with data from the good one, put them back, and since then everything is working like a charm.

[AndreyS]

I couldn't find an EEPROM on these boards. The back sides of the boards lacks any ICs.
It has two XILINX units: xc9536xl (CPLD) and xc3s50 (FPGA). Could it be that the firmware is embedded into those units?

[AndreyS]

These are photos of boards

[coromonadalix]

unless the fpga is corrupted    have a programmer to read on the good one and re-write it if its possible,   the xc9536 can be read too if its not protected ??

[AndreyS]

I don't know.
Are you saying that that FPGA can be read?

[coromonadalix]

I think the firmware reside in/on the pci card, and thru the rj45 look a like network plug, it communicate with the external enclosure

Maybe check for a defective plug or contacts ??

Unless has you wrote : a firmware something or an ID check could be in the fpga ??


We used xc9536 in our pc boards,  now they are obsolete EOL and there are many copycats of this chip around, we had many problems.

For the fpga, you have 2 unused headers on the board, maybe one of them go thru the programming pins of the fpga ??  you have some digging to do.