Outfitting a 96IO

[audioio]

Just picked up two 96IOs courtesy of Andy (a very nice Trocker... please do help him out by buying some of his stuff).

I opened one up to see how clean it was inside. (Last pair I looked at was full of dust.) Here's the skinny...

Those of you who have them, will have noticed the two removable panels on the back. Hmm, looks a bit like the back of a 192IO and, in fact, the fixed part of the rear panel are exactly the same: IEC power, loop sync, word clock, S/PDIF IO, AES/EBU IO, ADAT IO, primary and expansion ports, legacy port, accessory port.

Inside there are two pairs of mounting rails behind those spare panels. The motherboard has four slots for ribbon connectors to the IO cards. As you might anticipate, only two of them are used.

I'm wondering whether it would be possible to reduce weight and footprint by mounting the cards from one unit in the other.

Has anyone tried this? Do you think I would blow the unit up if I did?

(Cue anyone who's done repairs to Avid interfaces).

Thanks.

[Sammas]

I haven't done specifically what you have asked, but I have investigated adding analogue cards to a digital 192.

The verdict was basically "no" based on the 192 digital having a low rated power supply. I can't really imagine digidesign overrating their PSU's (saving unnecessary expenses, etc), particularly to run an addition 16 or so opamps but who knows.

I'll snap some closeups of my 192 tomorrow so you can compare, if you like.

[audioio]

Thanks for the quick response.

In the case of the 96, there's a metal frame above the motherboard and this seems to have the power supply hanging upside down from it. Is there a similar arrangement for the 192?

Shame it's not just something like an ATX where you could swap it out for a beefier one!

[audioio]

Here are the details of the internals of one of my units:

The power supply is manufactured by Skynet Electronics of Taiwan. I can't see a part number, but the edge of the board is marked "T3.15A, 250V".

The motherboard is marked:
FAB: 9410-32611-00 REV B
TOP ASY: 9150-32611-00 REV G

There are four "slots" (male connectors for ribbon cables) in the following order looking from the front of the unit, left to right:
Slot 2 - currently connected to the 8-ch analog output card
Slot 1 - currently connected to the 8-ch analog input card
Slot 4 - unconnected
Slot 3 - unconnected

The back end of the motherboard has the following ports on it: two Digilink, one legacy and one accessory.

The digital IO card sitting above that is marked:
FAB: 9410-28267-01 REV D
ASY: 9510-28267-00 REV E

Of course, revisions and some parts of the part numbers might be different in units of different ages (over the 10 years of manufacture), but I suspect that the motherboard and digital IO cards are the same for the 192IO. Furthermore, Black Lion Audio claims that the power supply is the same as the 192IO.

The only question I have is, even if the unit supported four analog IO cards, would the ADAT ports on the digital IO board still function. I seen it suggested (on the Digi User Conference I think) that 96IOs and 192IOs can handle only 16 channels of IO.

Maybe someone here knows.