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Gang,
I worked on a 2020 G23 today with a bad JLAudio MV800/8i amp. This is going to be a somewhat lengthy explanation but it was a complicated problem. I can only go so far keeping this short.
This amp is used in a lot of Nautiques and other boats. Not just the G23. Anyway, this boat had a bad amp. It failed under warranty and Nautique did a warranty replacement. The dealer was severely backed up on service so the owner elected to have the amp shipped here and we'd replace it ourselves. In this particular boat, it was the 800/8i that was driving the tower speakers.
We replaced the amp and connected all of the wiring exactly as it was with the failed amp. No issues there. Just take the old one out, install the new one and connect everything. Upon startup, the amp exhibited a blinking white LED on the front. Now I figured this meant the amp wasn't configured. This would be expected from a new amp right out of the box but there is NO mention of this particular LED code in any of the JLAudio documentation or any other Google search. The closest we could find was a blinking AMBER light which meant an impedance problem. We chased this for a while thinking there was a bad ground or some other bad wiring. Everything seemed fine.
I kept thinking a blinking white LED mean "no configuration" so I connected a USB cable and brought up the TUN 4 software. At that point we got an error message from TUN "Network MVI device available but not detected." This suggested that the TUN software could "see" the amp but couldn't configure it. We chased that for a while with no luck. If I plugged the USB cable into the other amp (the one for the cabin/sub) it could see it just fine. Nothing seemed to be helping getting it to see the tower amp.
We spent a couple of hours chasing this. We kept thinking the white blinking LED and the message "Network MVI device available but not detected" were related. Every time we'd reboot the amp, the LED would go blue for a few seconds and then back to blinking white. We thought these two issues were related but after more troubleshooting and fault isolation we found they were not.
Finally after hours of chasing this (and swearing we were giving up several times) we finally disconnected EVERYTHING from the tower amp except the power, ground, trigger and the USB cable to the laptop. The key change here was we disconnected the Ethernet cable going to the MVi-HUB. When we disconnected this, the white blinking LED persisted, but the error message from TUN 4 went away. I could see and configure the amp from TUN 4. From there I went into the mappings and connected the inputs to the outputs, saved this configuration and uploaded it to the amp. As soon as I did, the blinking white LED went to solid blue. The amp was configured.
I thought we were out of the woods here. The amp was working and we had music coming from the tower, cabin and sub speakers. Everything was working. So we started cleaning up. Shut everything down, reconnected the Ethernet cable and rebooted everything. No sound from the tower speakers. The amp was showing a solid blue LED, but no sound. More troubleshooting but the only change we made was the Ethernet cable going to the MVi-HUB. As soon as we disconnected it again, we had music from the tower. It seemed like it must be a bad Ethernet cable so I got another one and that was exactly the issue.
Overall, we had two problems and it took a lot of fault isolation to figure out that they were not related and must be solved independently.
So in summary: Blinking White LED = No configuration stored on the amp. "Network MVI device available but not detected" = bad Ethernet cable. Now I suspect there are many other possible causes for that error message in TUN 4 but this was what was causing the one I was chasing.
-Charles
I worked on a 2020 G23 today with a bad JLAudio MV800/8i amp. This is going to be a somewhat lengthy explanation but it was a complicated problem. I can only go so far keeping this short.
This amp is used in a lot of Nautiques and other boats. Not just the G23. Anyway, this boat had a bad amp. It failed under warranty and Nautique did a warranty replacement. The dealer was severely backed up on service so the owner elected to have the amp shipped here and we'd replace it ourselves. In this particular boat, it was the 800/8i that was driving the tower speakers.
We replaced the amp and connected all of the wiring exactly as it was with the failed amp. No issues there. Just take the old one out, install the new one and connect everything. Upon startup, the amp exhibited a blinking white LED on the front. Now I figured this meant the amp wasn't configured. This would be expected from a new amp right out of the box but there is NO mention of this particular LED code in any of the JLAudio documentation or any other Google search. The closest we could find was a blinking AMBER light which meant an impedance problem. We chased this for a while thinking there was a bad ground or some other bad wiring. Everything seemed fine.
I kept thinking a blinking white LED mean "no configuration" so I connected a USB cable and brought up the TUN 4 software. At that point we got an error message from TUN "Network MVI device available but not detected." This suggested that the TUN software could "see" the amp but couldn't configure it. We chased that for a while with no luck. If I plugged the USB cable into the other amp (the one for the cabin/sub) it could see it just fine. Nothing seemed to be helping getting it to see the tower amp.
We spent a couple of hours chasing this. We kept thinking the white blinking LED and the message "Network MVI device available but not detected" were related. Every time we'd reboot the amp, the LED would go blue for a few seconds and then back to blinking white. We thought these two issues were related but after more troubleshooting and fault isolation we found they were not.
Finally after hours of chasing this (and swearing we were giving up several times) we finally disconnected EVERYTHING from the tower amp except the power, ground, trigger and the USB cable to the laptop. The key change here was we disconnected the Ethernet cable going to the MVi-HUB. When we disconnected this, the white blinking LED persisted, but the error message from TUN 4 went away. I could see and configure the amp from TUN 4. From there I went into the mappings and connected the inputs to the outputs, saved this configuration and uploaded it to the amp. As soon as I did, the blinking white LED went to solid blue. The amp was configured.
I thought we were out of the woods here. The amp was working and we had music coming from the tower, cabin and sub speakers. Everything was working. So we started cleaning up. Shut everything down, reconnected the Ethernet cable and rebooted everything. No sound from the tower speakers. The amp was showing a solid blue LED, but no sound. More troubleshooting but the only change we made was the Ethernet cable going to the MVi-HUB. As soon as we disconnected it again, we had music from the tower. It seemed like it must be a bad Ethernet cable so I got another one and that was exactly the issue.
Overall, we had two problems and it took a lot of fault isolation to figure out that they were not related and must be solved independently.
So in summary: Blinking White LED = No configuration stored on the amp. "Network MVI device available but not detected" = bad Ethernet cable. Now I suspect there are many other possible causes for that error message in TUN 4 but this was what was causing the one I was chasing.
-Charles
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