Hi, I have a fully working Z390 Designare. But I need to flash the thunderbolt firmware due to blackmagic Ultrastudio issues. (It lags by 7 seconds after several minutes of playback all of a sudden, even though everything is word clocked.) Unfortunately, I can't buy another Designare MB since they are not available. I have bought the tools to flash. But I am not comfortable in blowing it up since I can't purchase another MB. Is it really that difficult? Has anyone burnt his MB doing this? Is there a similar board that could replace this one in case I mess up? Thanks for your help
Hi
@mysticmerlin That's a lot of seconds of drift! I thought I'd weigh in as a fellow BMD and Word Clock user.
I'm running Mojave on both of my hacks. Neither has flashed Thunderbolt hardware and hotplug works well and I don't have any connection issues or framerate/samplerate drift.
Are you absolutely certain that it's not an external hardware issue, driver issue, or a ystem Preferences< Security & Privacy parameter? FWIW, my Blackmagic Design Multidock II has no issues and my Apollo 8, Fractal Axe FX II XL+, and 003R can slave via WC or S/PDIF without issue in Avid, FCPX, and Resolve (the free one).
One important thing about my systems is that they
never sleep. Even with my real Macs, I've had nothing but trouble with Sleep and Power Nap. The machines never sleep. Also, sometimes Mojave (and especially Big Sur) will "automatically" change my audio hardware device settings and their respective samplerates and master clock source. Go in to each audio device in Audio Midi Setup and manually change the sample rates for each to 48 KHz. Close the Audio Midi Setup app. Relaunch it, and while Audio Midi Setup is open, power cycle your external devices and see if there are any mismatched sample rates. I know it sounds unlikely, but it could fix things and save you a flashing.
Please try it before flashing your Thunderbolt. Here's the TB patch I've been using: