Some satisfactions aren't worth it

Yesterday, a good portion of my day was devoted to getting my new piece of recording equipment up and running. The MOTU 828 mkII I/O. I went and bought one used off some bloke in JP. I get it home and immediately it doesn't work because I don't have the correct cable. I don't have a Firewire port on my laptop, which I bought specifically because it had an IEEE 1394 port, which to my understanding was Firewire. Well, as I learned yesterday, it is, but it's a 4 pin port instead of the stereotypical Firewire look, which is a 6 pin adapter.

So I run out to Radio Shack and buy the right wire. Add another $34 onto the $500 I paid for the I/O.

"$500?!?!? I don't even spend that much on a hooker!!" That may be what you're saying, but understand: this piece of equipment sells new for about $800. In fact, if I decided I never wanted to use it, I could probably sell it for a profit on Ebay. But I do want to use it, because now I'll ahve the ability to record 8 tracks of audio onto my computer at once, instead of the mere 1 track I was able to do with my old I/O.

Anyway, I get home with my new cable and hook everything up. Up comes the hardware wizard, and I go through it and can't complete successfully. I then think that "Well, maybe I need to download the drivers first," and close out of the wizard.

Now, here's where a large part of my problem came in. When I closed out of the wizard there was a box checked that said something like: "Do not try to complete this installation later." Or something like that. I saw it just as I was closing the wizard and a voice in the back of my head said this might cause me trouble later.

Anyway, I go to the MOTU site and get the latest and greatest in drivers. And, hey look! there's new options on my computer now for my 828. I click on one and get the "No MOTU devices found" error. Click on the next and get the same. Try the other two and nothing.

Uninstall, reinstall. No love.

Disconnect, reconnect. No love.

Uninstall, disconnect, reinstall, reconnect. No love.

Hardware wizard. No love.

Manually search every hardware option. No love.

Try install from DP4 disc that came with the unit. No love. (Although I didn't expect it to work. DP4 stands for Digital Performer, and is a recording software that runs solely on Mac. So, in fact not only did it not work, but it also jammed my CD drive closed until I rebooted.)

Punch computer. No love.

This goes on for a while.

Meanwhile, that little nagging thought about the checkbox is still in my head. So after about an hour and a half I go and do a system restore to the day before. What this does is it removes any updates I had done that day, it basically makes the computer "forget" that Sunday, March 26 ever happened. After this I try again, using the reccomended procedure on MOTU's site.

I download the drivers. Reboot. Plug in 828 as computer comes up and......VOILA! The hardware wizard is back. Successfully complete install.

Start to finish, from when I bought the unit to this point, maybe about 3.5 - 4 hours. And while I was immensely satisfied that it was now working and not just a $534 paperweight, I feel I would have much more enjoyed the experience had it worked on the first go. Had I done it right the first time, in truth.

The next 1.5 to 2 hours involved playing around with the interface which looks to be pretty intuitive, which is good since the unit didn't come with instructions and MOTU doesn't appear to have them on their site, and transferring a couple of recordings in progress over from my desktop to my laptop which took a while because these files can get pretty huge and took 3 CD each to transfer.

However, what this all means is that I'm not fully functional to record on my laptop. Now I just need to write some tunes to record.