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Fat Frog losing its mind...


vinntec

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Hi everyone - I have just plotted our latest show on our trusty Fat Frog. A few days later I came in and found all the memories wiped which was a mystery as the desk had been locked so not possible to do it accidentally. First thought, battery? Went into super user and it says "battery status normal". Fortunately had saved the show to floppy so recovering the cues was easy.

 

However since then, whenever it is powered off it loses the following settings (might be others): Wide is returned to off, Lock is turned off, and LED intensity reverts to 50%, but memories have been maintained - so far at least. Can anyone shed light on this - is it the battery on the way out which seems the most likely culprit? I am concerned about taking the desk apart with a show opening at the weekend, so need to be sure before we do so.

 

Many thanks -- Peter

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I would never trust a battery status indication on anything with a simple ni-cad and reistor charging circuit. All they do is measure the voltage and, if the desk is on, this will be much higher than when it is off due to charging current. If you want to be sure, switch the desk off, leave it for a few hours then measure the voltage with a dvm

HTH

Dave

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Most likely the battery. Check the date/time - if it has reverted to the eighteenth century then the battery has failed. I had to do my Frog a couple of weeks ago. Changing it out is quite easy - details are on the Zero88 support website.
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Just 2 days ago I swapped a battery on a frog for exactly the same reason.

Its a standard cr2032 and takes just a few secconds to do, just like on any pc mother board...

 

It was harder work getting the desk back together into tis moulded side pannels and I needed someone else to be a 3rd hand while I got a screw back in.. but yeah its very basic.

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Hello again - an extra development...

 

When we switch the desk off, leave it a few minutes and switch it back on, the memories are reverting to the ones which were on the desk the last time it was switched on (might be last time memories were loaded from diskette).

 

A rather obvious cue change keeps coming back and we are using edit live instructions in the manual exactly as it says and can run all the modified cues perfectly while the desk is switched on. Switch it off and on and the live edit changes have gone and the previous setting has reappeared. If, however, I load the show from diskette after powering back on, then that works fine. I did notice that when loading from diskette, the last things that happens is it writes the cues to the memory which takes long enough to notice (which it doesn't seem to do when editing live and saying you want to save changes).

 

We open tomorrow evening and think we can survive by loading from diskette as part of the start-up procedure, but I do not understand why the changes are not being stored when edited with mains on but can still be played back until the desk is turned off!

 

Does this make sense to anyone?

 

Peter

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Are you saving the show after doing the alterations?

Hi Paul - when I do the live edits then yes I say yes to save changes - this is all the manual says needs to be done. The cues playback perfectly at this point and are saved to diskette in his state. Switch off, switch on and the cues have reverted to how they used to be in memory :angry:.

 

The battery is on the way out and will be changed at the end of the current run, but I can't see how this matters when the desk is on mains power when the live edits are made? We are now reloading cues from diskette every power up to make sure we have latest ones.

 

These symptoms make no sense, but of course we will test it again when we replace the battery.

 

Peter

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It's the battery, the battery runs the RAM all the time (I've never dug deeply enough in to the schematics to see what happens when power is applied to the desk) and the symptons you're describing are of the battery current and voltage not being able to sustain the RAM.

 

Changing the battery on a 'late' model Frog is about a 10 minute job so it would be worth doing now - the only hiccup is likely to be if it's an ealry Frog in which case the battery will be a NimH cell and you'll have to remove the mainboard to swap that. It's easy enough to see which is which - two screws to pop the case open and peer inside (in fact - have a CR2032 handy and swap it whilst you're in there!).

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Hi Ian and Fireball - you must be right, I'll feedback next week. Our desk is on a perch position and needs to be flown (literally) down to the ground for maintenance, so this plus taking it apart plus getting it back up is just too much of a risk on a live show (unless it stops working altogether which doesn't look like will be the case). Peter
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Hi Ian and Fireball - you must be right, I'll feedback next week. Our desk is on a perch position and needs to be flown (literally) down to the ground for maintenance, so this plus taking it apart plus getting it back up is just too much of a risk on a live show (unless it stops working altogether which doesn't look like will be the case). Peter

 

Gah! No sense of adventure - where's your bosun's chair and harness :P

 

(Kidding of course children - don't try that at school....)

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Just to close the loop, we replaced the battery today and hey presto! Our Fat Frog is back to its old self. It only took a few minutes to replace it but putting the desk back together was a challenge, even with two people! Peter
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Just to close the loop, we replaced the battery today and hey presto! Our Fat Frog is back to its old self. It only took a few minutes to replace it but putting the desk back together was a challenge, even with two people! Peter

 

That's good to hear - the Frog is a nice solid desk, I see so few of them for repair unless they've been really abused.

 

As for a "Challenge" - surely one person with one hand tied behind his back and only a Gerber (other brands are available) is a challenge? :P

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