"Converting" M-Audio Delta 1010 breakout box to ADAT

[Alex1238]

I got a Delta 1010 I/O box with no card at the thrift store for basically free, my first plan was to strip it for parts but now that i have it apart i'm starting to think that it should be easy enough to just convert to an ADAT I/O box.
Problem: i know little to nothing about working with digital audio electronics in practice, so i'm looking for a little guidance.
The way the box is built is as follows:
-Mainboard with PSU, MIDI, data interface, W/C I/O and DAC section
-Daughterboard sandwiched on top with ADC section

The way the board is sectioned up it seems to me that it should be easy enough to literally saw off the DAC/Power portion, keeping that, and adding a new board, using CoolAudio V1401/1402 chips. On paper, i think it would be as easy as tracing back the digital I/O pins from the AD/DA section and simply hook them up to the 140x, and adding a clock since i assume the 1010 system originally relies on the PC card or an external clock, could it really be that simple? Or am i missing something? I would also like to retain the external W/C I/O, could i simply add a switch to change between an internal clock and the BNC contacts? Or is it more complicated than that? The A/D section uses AKM AK5383VS converters and the D/As are AK4393VF. Could someone explain to me what MCLK and BICK are? Do all of these need separate clock signals at their respective frequencies or is this handled internally?
Here are some photos of the boards in question:

 

[soulsonic]

As a long-time owner of a Delta 1010, I can tell you that you should count on every single one of those level switches needing replaced.

 

[Alex1238]

As a long-time owner of a Delta 1010, I can tell you that you should count on every single one of those level switches needing replaced.

Thanks, i'll keep that in mind Other than that, would you say that the thing is decent enough quality to be worth shoehorning this project into?

 

[soulsonic]

Thanks, i'll keep that in mind Other than that, would you say that the thing is decent enough quality to be worth shoehorning this project into?

The converters were good sounding for their time. It's been nearly 5 years since mine was functional, so my memory of its sound is a little hazy. I can say that it seemed to have been sounding worse and worse over time, and those switches gave me alot of trouble. But I also made many very good recordings with it, but most of those recordings were 20+ years ago. I don't think that device ages well, unfortunately.

As far as the proposed project, my first question would be how to deal with clocking. Originally, it was able to clock from either its internal clock or external word clock. This was selected in the driver panel. So, I'm not sure how you would make the selection without the original host card to communicate with it. The default setting was internal, so maybe you'd be safe to assume it would stay that way.

Another thing, the unit is turned on/off by commands from the host card as well, so you'll need to figure out a way to replicate that. There is also an internal DSP mixer for zero latency monitor mixes - also controlled from the host card and control panel software. There are many potential complications here. But I think that DSP all lived in the host card, so it's likely the box is just the A/D/A, so maybe that isn't such a problem.

 

[Alex1238]

The box is indeed almost exclusively converters with no real intelligence, i think all of that, including the clocking was handled on the PC card, the section of the board leading to the host connector is almost completely barren bar a couple multiplexers, power is turned on by a relay that's wired directly to one of the pins on the DB connector. As such i think that it should theoretically be possible to basically replace that portion of the board entirely including onboard clocking. I would assume that the converters are already set up in such a way that i wouldn't even need to lift any pins or add any additional passives/connections to alter the configuration of the converters, but that's based on pure hopeful speculation

 

[Alex1238]

My plan is to basically cut the board there, those traces are *all* the interfacing between the two halves of the board, and ideally just build a dautghterboard that connects to it with a ribbon cable, ideally.