Dead DA88: what to do with it?

[philper]

The transport and heads on my DA88 have become unreliable--intermittent. The electronics and etc are all fine--1 owner, not used on location much etc. It doesn't make economic sense for me to pay what Tascam or etc wants to service a 16 bit machine, and the shipping for the thing would be expensive (having it packed, it's heavy etc). So it sits--in the way. So what should I do? Take it to the dump and pay the toxic waste fee as though it was a computer? Leave it out of the curb? No school etc wants to mess with a non-functioning machine...

Philip Perkins

[Geert van den Berg]

I'd look into what a pro-audio dealer would give you for it... probably not much, but you're rid of it... and might get a little money...

[poncival]

You can program your own message into the display and leave it on, I am sure you will get more than $200 worth of satisfaction out of this over the next 10 years and that will be a lot more than you will get out of it as a non-functional unit

(copied from http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_expert_advice_6/)

To change the greeting message on a Tascam DA-88:

1. Power On while holding Ffwd, Stop, and Play.

2. Press Stop before the word "TASCAM" begins scrolling. This will put the DA-88 into Test mode. "tESt" will appear in the time code display.

3. Press and hold the Up cursor, Down cursor, Display, and Remote keys (in that order). The letter A will appear in the time code display.

4. Press the Up or Down cursor key to select a character. Press the Display key to store the characters (you can store up to 30 characters).

5. Power Off then On to see the new greeting.

To restore the DA-88's original "TASCAM" greeting, follow the previous instructions and enter the word "TASCAM." Don't perform the initialization process on the DA-88, because that will also reset the drum use hours.-Courtesy Karl Moet, Tascam

[Geert van den Berg]

uhm, but doesn't that message only shows when powering it on...

And you'd have extra central heating in your studio + larger energy bills... so I don't think it'll give any $ satisfaction...

[Harvey Gerst]

You could also use it as a spare A/D or D/A converter.

[philper]

Originally Posted by Harvey Gerst

You could also use it as a spare A/D or D/A converter.

I have done that, but I mostly record 24 bit now.

Philip Perkins

[soundguydave]

You could blow it up and post the video on youtube. And it'd also serve as a warning to the rest of your gear not to act up.

[philper]

Originally Posted by soundguydave

You could blow it up and post the video on youtube. And it'd also serve as a warning to the rest of your gear not to act up.

That would be the Stephen St. Croix method.

We really like your avatar. That's my kind of math.

Philip Perkins

[soundguydave]

Thanks, I wish I could take credit, but I can't. Heres some more.


Funny math | haha.nu - a lifestyle blogzine

[soundboy]

No, Stephen would feed it to his lion and then blow up the Lion. Maybe some repair place could use it for parts.

[jahtao]

One of our DA88 machines broke recently so we replaced it with a DA98 machine (which also play DA88's of course)

But we also had the bloody thing fixed (at at some painful expense)... why? Because we were advised that there are occasional DA88 tapes that won't play properly in a DA98 machine. Something about the way they were recorded or something. Hasn't come up yet... hmmm... anyone else heard this?

I hate DA88's!!! AAAARGGGHHH



Matt

[jhamburg]

Two words:

Door Stop

joel

[Farview]

Two more words: Boat anchor.

I have 5 of them, three are working. They just sit in a rack and look important. There is no point in fixing them, it's cheaper to buy used da98's on ebay.

[logichead]

Store it with your Adat machines. Best....H

[poncival]

Originally Posted by Geert van den Berg

uhm, but doesn't that message only shows when powering it on...

And you'd have extra central heating in your studio + larger energy bills... so I don't think it'll give any $ satisfaction...

Hmmm. I seem to remember a way we could get them to repeat the message indefinitely when we were setting them up in the music store back in the day when they were brand new but now that you mention it I am not sure.

Maybe you could hook it up to a "clapper" and then anytime you needed some inspirational message you could just clap and there it would be..

[gurubuzz]

I was going to say throw it away but looks like you film guys are very funny like me....

[dlmorley]

Anyone with a motu 2408 might find it useful as 8 extra i/o...

[gurubuzz]

I tried to get 3 DA88's to be digital to analog converters for an MX2424 with Tdif cards. It was at an out door music festival and the act had a disk for a 2424 At the time we wern't able to source a 2424 with an analog card but people asured me that it will be fine as long as I set them to slave.

This was the headline act's gear and he was doing his thing at 6am as the sun was comming up.

I had every self confessed gear slut back stage trying every which way to get them to work...we even had the full manuals for both.

the rave was out in the country and I even had a three way satalite phone link up to a production sound guy who was also talking on another phone to a guy in Paris and everything they sugessted we had already tried.

we even had tapes in them in record mode.....

It was funny the event organiser was really sweating and every now and again he'd bring someone back stage and he'd say "see you should be more like this guy he's gonna get it right for us" Ha Ha HA.....

Anyway the DJ/producer went back to his hotel and created a whole new set on his laptop and pretended to mix as we still had all the cables hooked up to a Mackie 32-8......fuuck

I would have thought the 2424 would have been 100%compatible out of the box....tutt

[Farview]

Originally Posted by gurubuzz

I tried to get 3 DA88's to be digital to analog converters for an MX2424 with Tdif cards. It was at an out door music festival and the act had a disk for a 2424 At the time we wern't able to source a 2424 with an analog card but people asured me that it will be fine as long as I set them to slave.

This was the headline act's gear and he was doing his thing at 6am as the sun was comming up.

I had every self confessed gear slut back stage trying every which way to get them to work...we even had the full manuals for both.

the rave was out in the country and I even had a three way satalite phone link up to a production sound guy who was also talking on another phone to a guy in Paris and everything they sugessted we had already tried.

we even had tapes in them in record mode.....

It was funny the event organiser was really sweating and every now and again he'd bring someone back stage and he'd say "see you should be more like this guy he's gonna get it right for us" Ha Ha HA.....

Anyway the DJ/producer went back to his hotel and created a whole new set on his laptop and pretended to mix as we still had all the cables hooked up to a Mackie 32-8......fuuck

I would have thought the 2424 would have been 100%compatible out of the box....tutt

That's strange. I've done that before and didn't have any problem. As far as clocking went, I had the DA88's synced together (like they would be if you were just using tape) and set the 2424 to lock to the TDIF.

Of course if that didn't work, I was prepared with a set of formatted tapes to capture the show. I could have figured out how to make everything talk to each other later.