Marian Trace Alpha sound card repair help

[Christos Tsiligiannis]

Hello to the forum.

My name is Christos, I am new to the forum here and i am posting from Greece.

So i have this old German sound card from Marian, called Trace Alpha. To be exact i have 2 of them and i use them professionally for my small FM radio station here. The first one works like a charm, but the second one does not work at all.

To be more specific in the same exact pc with windows 7 (i even tried 32bit) the one works while the other doesn't.

So i tried asking for a schematic from the company and they would not give me one. Instead they went ahead and asked for money to repair. Problem is that repair costs plus shipping makes any sense for this old card, but i would like to get it repair and probably keep it as a spare if one of my other breaks (i also have some other from many brands).

Anyway, so this card gets recognized by windows as a sound playback device without drivers installed, but when installing drivers i get error 10 from windows. Is says, sound card cannot open. Drivers from the manufacturer say DMA engine not ready.

It is not a driver's fault as the other card with the same drivers work fine. I have also tried even older (even the first) versions and nothing..

So at first i was thinking there must be something wrong near the PCI connector like a capacitor or something as it seems the sound card does not get any voltage. so i am kinda speculating these old electrolytic aluminum capacitors shown in the photo. I have also read online that the crystal oscillator can break on some sound cards but i haven't found anything about my exact card. i have ordered 10 of these 47 16s capacitors as well as one 40mhz oscillator from alliexpress to try and replace and see if these might be broken. One guy told me to reflow them a bit and add some solder to all the pins i see as loose connections is a common thing for sound cards.

any thoughts for troubleshooting?

[stj]

get a datasheet for the spartan fpga,
then check the voltages and any clocks on it.
if those are good it may have lost it's configuration eeprom data

[Christos Tsiligiannis]

get a datasheet for the spartan fpga,
then check the voltages and any clocks on it.
if those are good it may have lost it's configuration eeprom data

thanks for the reply.

unfortunately I only have a multimeter so I can only test voltages not clocks.

so I let’s pray it’s a bad cap or something

[stj]

you can also check any voltage regulators on the board.

[Christos Tsiligiannis]

you can also check any voltage regulators on the board.

Can you help me on how to check those?

[stj]

what are the part numbers on ic's 10,18 and 20?
they are the packages with 3 pins on one edge and a tab on the oposite edge.

[Christos Tsiligiannis]

what are the part numbers on ic's 10,18 and 20?
they are the packages with 3 pins on one edge and a tab on the oposite edge.

Ic10: 24AD N00A
ic18: 2CRN N13A
ic20: 23AE N05A

[Christos Tsiligiannis]

not a clue?

[gerry.b]

in eBay i found a brand new Marian Trace Alpha sound card in germany for 50€: auction number 176858394388

[Christos Tsiligiannis]

in eBay i found a brand new Marian Trace Alpha sound card in germany for 50€: auction number 176858394388

thanks for the reply!

I have sent my old broken card in Marian for fixing. I am still waiting (2-3 months now). I told them to not rush as I have it as a backup. So I am thankful for the eBay listing, but I will leave it for anyone else that might need it more.