using Zlink for connecting 2 computers

bill3107 · Post by **bill3107** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 8:15 am

Do you think it could be possible to link 2 computers via the zlink connectors of 2 soundcards installed in each PC ? Thus, it could replace the ADAT trick .... Any idea if it is possible ? thanks !

Jo

alfonso · Post by **alfonso** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 8:33 am

No, Z-link is not meant to be hooked card to card, a.f.a.i.k. it will also break the cards for voltage issues. It's only for the converter boxes.

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 8:58 am

alfonso wrote:No, Z-link is not meant to be hooked card to card, a.f.a.i.k. it will also break the cards for voltage issues. It's only for the converter boxes.

I think I read something similar. can't figure out where, but it's not in the manual.

-greetings, markus-

ali · Post by **ali** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 11:45 am

bill3107 wrote:Do you think it could be possible to link 2 computers via the zlink connectors of 2 soundcards installed in each PC ? Thus, it could replace the ADAT trick .... Any idea if it is possible ? thanks !

Jo

That is the fastest way to damage both cards.

Zlink is meant to connect a Scope to I/O box (A16 U or Luna box)

if you connect Zlink to Zlink you will damage the 2 cards for sure.

ali · Post by **ali** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 11:46 am

alfonso wrote:No, Z-link is not meant to be hooked card to card, a.f.a.i.k. it will also break the cards for voltage issues. It's only for the converter boxes.

100% true

MikeRaphone · Post by **MikeRaphone** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 4:44 pm

What about connecting two computers via a16U?
a16U has two zlink connectors- is it possible to connect one to one card in one computer and another to second card in other computer and then somehow link them in the routing windows?
Has anyone tried that?

Thx

Post by **garyb** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 5:12 pm

no, but adat can be used.

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 11:51 pm

MikeRaphone wrote:What about connecting two computers via a16U?
a16U has two zlink connectors- is it possible to connect one to one card in one computer and another to second card in other computer and then somehow link them in the routing windows?

you can surely plug one computer to zlink port 1 and another to zlink port 2. but I doubt that this is what you want. both computer would see 8 i/o ports then. to feed signals from one to the other you also had to link the analog i/o ports (1-8 in to 9-16 out and vice versa). you had to care for sync (I think you could slave both pc's to the a16u), but there would be double ad/da conversion. there is no such feature to route any signal from whereever it enters the a16u to a desired output (like it is done in the motu gear, afaik).

-greetings, markus-

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 3:02 am

MikeRaphone wrote:What about connecting two computers via a16U?
...

extending Ali's words...
there is supply power on the zlink cable
with only the slightest difference (the smaller the more current will flow...) in 'base-level' you will not only literally fry the setup, but physically with smoke and burnt circuit boards

cheers, Tom

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 5:02 am

astroman wrote: with only the slightest difference (the smaller the more current will flow...) in 'base-level' you will not only literally fry the setup, but physically with smoke and burnt circuit boards

maybe this can happen when not all 3 units are properly grounded
(provided we are not talking about the direct pc zlink to zlink connection, which is definitely dangerous, but the pc to a16u to pc connection).

but even if the manual does not explicitly says "don't connect one zlink port to one and the other port to another pc" the hint that zlink ports have to carry signals with equal phase kinda says "don't do it". the next sentence says something like "when connected via stdm, the equal phase is guaranteed in a bunch of cards". thus, a card here and a card there would not work in most cases, since the a16u will mute completely if unequal phase signals are detected.

there is a possibility to set the a16u to adat mode while being zlink slave. that means you route the signal coming from a16u via zlink to adat out.

since the adat connection is optical and carries no electrical signal being able to fry anything, even astroman could be convinced, couldn't he?

ah, and if zlink is set to 88 or 96khz, adat will be set to s/mux automatically (and reducing port count to half...).

-greetings, markus-

ali · Post by **ali** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 11:42 am

astroman wrote: extending Ali's words...
there is supply power on the zlink cable
with only the slightest difference (the smaller the more current will flow...) in 'base-level' you will not only literally fry the setup, but physically with smoke and burnt circuit boards

cheers, Tom

To extend your extention Tom,

easily understood with luna box example:

those withluna boxes will notice that there is no power switch or extra DC power needed for the Luna box to be activated and turned on.

So they can easily see that the Luna box is powered via the Zlink cable that comes out of the Luna card or ScopeZlink card.

Hence the Luna box receive power and voltage from the card .

Imagine connecting a Zlink cable from 1 card to another card.

where would the voltage that each card send out go?

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 12:46 pm

ali wrote: those withluna boxes will notice that there is no power switch or extra DC power needed for the Luna box to be activated and turned on.

So they can easily see that the Luna box is powered via the Zlink cable that comes out of the Luna card or ScopeZlink card.

Hence the Luna box receive power and voltage from the card .

did you ever take a look at the focusrite saffire firewire audio interface (and maybe other devices)? it's connected via ordinary firewire (proper ieee1394), but can be powered from the fw bus, too (alternatively via power supply, since ieee1394 does not have to supply power, by example when only a 4-pin plug on the host side is available).

hence the pure absence of a power input and / or power switch is no sign that connecting two 6-pin ieee1394 ports will necessarily damage anything. you can even connect 2 computers via firewire and load a networking stack on top of the ieee1394 to have an ethernet substitute (I think unibrain made such software for systems that have no native support for that).

nevertheless: directly connecting z-link to z-link (card to card) will do damage!

-greetings, markus-

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 1:13 pm

kylie wrote:...hence the pure absence of a power input and / or power switch is no sign that connecting two 6-pin ieee1394 ports will necessarily damage anything. ...

even the 'wrong' connection will not necessarily damage anything...

the point is first to be aware of the possibility, second to be aware of the fact that one might not know all about the circuits and third to suffer silently and without complaints if it went wrong...

it doesn't need much to convince me btw (to any nonsense in that context)...
I just didn't want to believe that CW would construct 2 entirely different sync plates, so I connected the one I have from the old TDAT16 to the Pulsar, even the internal cables match...
when I connected a BNC cable to the A16, it took just a couple of seconds to smell..., screw up all eyes and desperately grasp for the powerplug.
Yeah, smoke coming out of the case - the internal cable was burnt - but it turned out to be just the cable... ooommps

but in fact I remember an external FW disk in the office, that almost certainly died a 'sudden power' death, for whatever reason. Plugged it in and yes - there was this faint smell of overheated parts... the interface of the disk completely dead. Maybe it was a chinese mass fab thing, maybe an unfortunate plug-in sequence... but it wasn't the first unit (of that series) to fail

cheers, Tom

ali · Post by **ali** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 1:47 pm

[/quote]nevertheless: directly connecting z-link to z-link (card to card) will do damage!-greetings, markus-[/quote]

agree, as this was tried by a luna user and damage did happen to the 2 cards.

katano · Post by **katano** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 2:58 pm

yep, and here's the official creamware document:

ftp://ftp.creamware.com/help/WARNING%20 ... Z-Link.doc

cheers
roman

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:09 am

katano wrote:yep, and here's the official creamware document:

http://ftp.creamware.com/help/WARNING%2 ... Z-Link.doc

ahh, I damn knew that I read that once...

hmm, this is the second post I read where bbcode seems broken. well, after looking again, ali just entered two ending tags, but what with katano's bbcode? does url expect http as argument only (and no ftp)? hm no, replacing test does not work... maybe escape characters in there that are not bbcode compliant..

anyone else experiencing that?

-greetings, markus-

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:21 am

astroman wrote: I just didn't want to believe that CW would construct 2 entirely different sync plates, so I connected the one I have from the old TDAT16 to the Pulsar, even the internal cables match...
when I connected a BNC cable to the A16, it took just a couple of seconds to smell..., screw up all eyes and desperately grasp for the powerplug.
Yeah, smoke coming out of the case - the internal cable was burnt - but it turned out to be just the cable... ooommps

damn, you're lucky

.

I had a customer once whose 2 computers had to be networked. located in different rooms I was about to plug the ethernet cable into pc #2 when the other room was blackened the very moment the shielding from the plug touched the slot cover....

the fuse was blown (I don't know what's the correct term for FI-Schutzschalter), and we could reproduce the behaviour. it turned out later that parts of the house were renovated at different times and the door connecting those rooms were broken through the wall later. the rooms were on different electrical grounding levels.
no damage was done to the equipment, but, well... they were lucky, too

(I think we circumvented this with fiberoptic transceivers, btw. the very similar priciple of avoiding electrical problems by connecting one computer with zlink to an a16u and the other to the adat ports of the very same a16u

)

-greetings, markus-

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 11:20 am

kylie wrote:... it turned out later that parts of the house were renovated at different times and ...
... the rooms were on different electrical grounding levels.
no damage was done to the equipment, but, well... they were lucky, too ...

yes, that's exactly the reason - and there are countless of such installations, undetected in everyday life (a lightbulb or a motor-drill doesn't care much about it).

Regarding my own 'luck' or rather 'stupidity', I simply didn't expect there was a voltage potential at all on the connector, and so I didn't even mind the direction of the plug on the card. If it wouldn't work, I'd simply reverse it - instead of the correct way to remove the card from the PC and look where the '1' line of the cable is located... the punishment wasn't entirely undeserved...

One day I'll try the sync plate again, but with a bit more care...

cheers, Tom

areptiledysfunction · Post by **areptiledysfunction** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:59 pm

astroman wrote:
MikeRaphone wrote:What about connecting two computers via a16U?
...
extending Ali's words...
there is supply power on the zlink cable
with only the slightest difference (the smaller the more current will flow...) in 'base-level' you will not only literally fry the setup, but physically with smoke and burnt circuit boards

cheers, Tom

You mean that by doing this you can catch your studio on fire faster than you can if you plug 4 x sets of 600 ohm cans into on old Behringer Powerplay and crank 'em out?

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