Zero 88 Fat Frog and other 'legacy' desks with floppy disc dri

[UKTheatreTech]

I've just decided to replace the floppy disc drive in a much-used Fat Frog at a Suffolk theatre. Every show has different lighting needs and backing up show files to a flash drive is still important to us. Yes, I know it's April 2018 but we're still obliged to use floppy discs for backup! No more...

It's also useful to have personalities for a selection of LED and common intelligent lights.

I trawled through a very useful thread on this subject before taking the plunge. ('Fog floppy emulator' is the topic if you'd like to check it out). Everything has worked with the USB replacement: it's a slick solution and upgrade for a reliable Zero 88 product. Here's how we did it:

 

1/ Buy a FDD Emulator, in this case a '3.5" 1.44Mb floppy drive MFM to USB flash disc emulator + CD Black' on E-bay from 'factoryselling100'. It took just over a week to arrive, came from the Far East and cost just £15.26

2/ Buy a USB flash drive

 

3/ Put something soft and padded on a workbench to protect the sliders and buttons, and lay the Fat Frog upside down.

4/ Remove the six screws holding each end profile and put to one side (carefully!)

5/ Remove the large black screws on the base (there are 24 screws total including the ends!). The front curved panel comes away, the rear is attached to sockets.

6/ Carefully lift the base up, tilting it to the back of the desk and supporting it. Take care of the ribbon cables and earth bond. It's handy to have two people to do this.

7/ Unplug the two ribbon cables to the floppy drive, tilt the base of the desk down to unscrew and remove the drive (four screws you hope you won't need again, but keep them in case)

8/ Tilting the base up again, fit the two ribbon cables to the emulator, hold it in position, then tilt the base down to fit the four self-threading screws (supplied with the emulator) to fix it in place. The holes should line up perfectly.

9/ Now is a good time to fit a new CR2032 battery - you'll see it gleaming on a circuit board, about the size of a 10p coin. Easily obtained from most retailers, as it's not a specialist battery.

Note that if you've had problems with data loss or the desk clock loses its time when you turn it off, the CR2032 battery has died. Don't wait until it does, replace it while you've got the Frog on the operating table.

10/ Carefully refit the base of the desk ensuring no ribbons or other cables are trapped. Align the screw holes and insert but don't tighten. Fit the rear and front panels and ensure they're aligned.

11/ Fit the end metal profiles, ensuring they line up with the panels each side, which fit in grooves in the end profiles. Insert the screws but don't tighten yet.

12/ Tighten all the base screws, then the end profile screws - checking before you do so that the front and rear panels are correctly located.

13/ The Frog can now come off the operating table and be turned right side up. Reconnect power and peripherals - keyboard, monitor, DMX

14/ Using a PC or laptop running Windows and the software mentioned earlier in this thread, partition your USB stick into 100 "floppies" of 1.44Mb. It actually appears that you don't have to do this, but we did so the Fat Frog didn't get confused. This process only takes a short time. http://www.ipcas.com...n-download.html

15/ If you're not running Zero 88 Fat Frog OS v10.12 (2009), it's worth downloading it from their site (under 'Legacy Desks'), popping it on your new flash drive and upgrading your desk. The process is described in detail earlier in this thread. One thing - it's worth putting the new OS on Partition 10. The reason: when you put the USB into the desk and power it up, the emulator defaults to '00' on the emulator display (actually floppy or Partition 1), but you can swiftly select Partition 10 by pressing one button on the emulator so the desk sees that first as it boots up and will recognise there's new software available. Follow the directions on the LCD screen, not the monitor as it doesn't show anything during an upgrade!

16/ Once you've upgraded, select 00 on the emulator and test saving a show to disc by recording some memories and going through the normal process of saving to floppy disc - except you're now saving to a flash drive. It will be recorded as Show 1. You can't add a show title. Now record a few more (different) memories and save those as Show 2. To test everything is working with the USB, go back and load Show 1 from disc, it will over-write Show 2 on the desk. Everything working as you expect?

17/ If you're feeling super keen you can download selected fixture personalities on a PC or laptop running Windows and put them onto one or multiple Partitions ('Floppies') on the USB, starting with 11. You can also have someone even keener write a personality for a specific new piece of kit which won't be in the fixture personalities list for legacy ("OLD") desks. Depends how desperate you are. Of course, the original Fat Frog personalities are still in the desk but there aren't many of them.

18/ Take care of your Fat Frog and it will continue to give service for another ten years. Considering ours was made in 2005, it's looking remarkably perky as it's just had a software and hardware upgrade to flash drive.

19/ Tip: If you want to test the faders, buttons and encoder wheels, turn the desk on while holding the F1 button down. Different flash buttons between 1 and 14 give you different test options.

20/ Many venues still use a Fat Frog or other Frog console with a floppy drive, and may be worried about swapping it out for a USB flash drive. Don't be! Go for it. You're out of warranty anyway...

Edited May 1, 2018 by paulears

[david.elsbury]

1) your other post about this was probably enough. No need to spam.

 

2) can you see all of the HTML formatting tags? Those make it almost unreadable. Best not to copy paste from Word... it often does that. Some cleanup might be in order.?

[paulears]

Moderation: I've just lost half an hour of my life trying to edit out more of the html - I still haven't got rid of it all, but what is left at least displays. Please note - very few people use strange fonts, random colours and extra big size words - it really isn't how we do things. Please - when you post, spare a while to make yours look like everyone else's, because our members are a strange bunch - me included, and if a post is hard to read - we don't bother. Paul

[TomHoward]

I looked at doing ours but didn't in the end, as although it disposed of the need for floppy disks it didn't fix our main issue that the fixture tables hosted by Zero88 for the Frog series desk have outgrown 1.44MB so can't be loaded into the desk without modification on the fixture table editor to get the file size down, so you can't add a new fixture in a rush directly from the website files.

Alan are you interested in our Bullfrog 96? (It's on eBay at the moment)

[ianknight]

I also think because the OP has taken the time to write down a detailed "step by step" that this probably should be a wiki article where it stands a better chance of being found amongst the myriad "My Fat Frog floppy drive doesn't work..." style posts that Google would undoubtedly turn up.

[kgallen]

Steps 4/ and 5/

 

You don't need to remove all of these screws on a Frog/Fat Frog (yes there are more to do on the larger BullFrog/LeapFrog). To get in to do a battery replacement you just need to remove the two lower screws in the rear of the holey side plates, then the bottom panel with the CPU boards etc drops down then just un-slots from the front edge. Detaching the earth bond and ribbon cables should get you a separate front panel and base plate/CPU assembly. Then just the 4 screws that hold the floppy drive to the base plate.

 

HTH

 

Kevin

[UKTheatreTech]

Sorry about that! I copied and pasted it from my original post as a new subject because the original thread was so long and didn't include a 'step-by-step' of how to replace the floppy drive on a Zero 88 desk. I noticed that all the HTML had come through as well and deleted all that I could see.

Feel free to delete the post as it's a duplicate merely to help other techs find the subject easily. Thanks!

 

 

[UKTheatreTech]

Hi Tom

 

You can select individual manufacturer or fixture types from the cut-down legacy desk fixture list and simply pop those on the USB (or floppy). You don't need all the others, I suspect, and so many have been added since LED and intelligent lighting is now the mainstay of most rigs.

We're not looking to replace the Fat Frog, but thanks for the offer of a Bullfrog!

 

Alan

 

 

[Edward- Z88]

For more information on loading fixtures onto original Frog series consoles, please see here...

http://support.zero88.com/975064841

Edward

Edited May 8, 2018 by Edward- Z88

[Timo1982]

Hi,

 

I am looking at replacing my FatFrog floppy drive and I am wondering if after a year you have come across any issues or is your FF still working with the new drive?

 

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

 

 

[anydm]

On 6/20/2019 at 2:47 PM, Timo1982 said:

Hi,

 

I am looking at replacing my FatFrog floppy drive and I am wondering if after a year you have come across any issues or is your FF still working with the new drive?

 

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

 

 

Hi Timo

did you go ahead with this? If so can you have a look at my ‘other’ post on the same subject. I could do with some advice.

Thanks

Andy