....and it's official. Deck is totally dead. Barely turns on (hold down PWR for 2+ min), all inputs dead.
Not very impressed with Tascam at all. Deck has been used less than 10 times.
Thats awful. Hope its a quick fix 
You should just resell once it gets fixed and buy another R44
We need 8 channels on one deck
There's already 3 R44's we can use, but apparently connecting them only syncs the transports, not the word clocks.
If you've got
3 it's doable;
1st R44 = 4ch, spdif out ->
2nd R44 = 2spdif in (dupe), 2ch new, spdif out ->
3rd R44 = 2spdif in (dupe), 2ch new.
You get 8 channels of content and 4 channels of mush (or redundancy depending on how you configure the outbound spdif signal). Hell of a way to do it, but in a pinch, if you've got 3 machines you trust and just need 8 channels or less, that would do it.
edit: actually, the usbpre2 works to your advantage in this case because when it accepts a SPDIF signal, it only uses the wordclock portion IIRC, so you can interject it between two of the units and get another 2 channels:
1st R44 = 4ch spdif out ->
usbpre2 (accepting spdif), 2ch mic/line, spdif out ->
2nd R44 = 2spdif in (new from usbpre2), 2ch new, spdif out ->
3rd R44 = 2spdif in (dupes), 2ch new.
10 channels on 3 machines, and if you use a tekkeon or other battery that can do 2 voltages (including USB spec power) then you don't need any additional batteries.
edit2:
and with the usbpre2 and 2 R44s, you can do 8ch using the same theory as above (just realized that). Sound Devices doesn't suggest doing WC functions for more then either 3 or 4 hops, but you should be safe with at least 8ch. I'd want to test it with 10 but I think it has potential since you're passing a spdif signal and not necessarily a true WC signal, maybe, maybe not.
