ianknight

Yes... but... The British Standard for 5a round pin plugs was withdrawn around 2015 (if memory serves) so there are no manufacturers in Britain making 5a stuff - it has to be imported from South Africa. Because 5A round pin plugs no longer have a British Standard, any new installation can't use them as the installation won't comply (most contracts/T&C's will have a clause saying that all relevant fittings must comply to current standards etc). The standard being withdrawn doesn't mean existing installations have become "illegal" just by having 5a plugs & sockets (except there are some money grubbers who will insist that is exactly what it means) but it can make things more fraught when telling a customer that those new lighting bars they want can't be 5a. As for PAT testers making or carrying adaptors for round pin - yes they should if they profess to be any good but then for some of them, it will just mean a smaller plug for them to wrap the test wires of their megger around :P

Firstly - Jake needs to be certain that the existing lanterns have 150-300W lamps inside them, the bare minimum to expect in the likes of Patt 123's/23's or the Furse equivalents is 500W unless it's a rig full of Patt 139's or S battens but from experience they won't be. It's more likely to be a mix of Zero88 Focus, CCT Minuettes, Teatro or Selecon Acclaim in which case the minimum lamp fitted will be 500W or even 650W. That the rig is using 5a sockets & plugs (if indeed they are 5A and not 15A misidentified) suggests it's an old installation (probably older than my oldest pair of underpants) with only 12 or 18 ways of dimming and is likely to be heavily paired - in a school situation spare fuses are rare, getting dimmers repaired is rarer so it's likely this has also caused pairing. It's also likely that channel fuses might have blown & someone fitted glass fuses because they were "about the same size". The age of the system suggests that it might also simply be suffering from old age - insulation in the IWB's and patches might be failing (or even melting)... The truth is that the system needs a 'specialist' to have a look at it & not trust to advice from an internet forum that can't see the installation - any decent specialist will come & look for free to give this advice. It would seem that Jake is in Exeter, there must be reputable companies nearby who would come have a look especially given that 90% of these installations haven't been used over the last year... P.S using 7A fuses as channel fuses isn't unusual - Green Ginger dimmers were designed that way as the British Standard defines fuses as having to run at 50% over current and according to the designer (because I met him once) it was felt that 7A fuses would be found in the local hardware store more readily than 5A fuses & 10a fuses would see the dimmer destroyed before the fuse blew (this was the 80's after all).

The units are a bit out of my area of expertise but it might be worth a call to Central Theatre Supplies in Birmingham (0121 778 6400)? Ian Roberts there used to be a service tech with Stage LX & Gearhouse and has plenty of experience plus they might have supplied some Core stuff since I left.

Not sure about the track but the ruler in picture 1 is from Central Theatre Supplies circa 2005 :P The track might be old Strand track - something in my memory rings a bell about the circular running rail and it causing problems with wheeled runners as opposed to old "cotton reel bobbin" type of runners. Hall Stage did for a while produce a plastic version of these but I'm not sure whether they still do or not (I left CTS in 2017 and have lost track of curtain fixtures - pardon the pun). <_<

Yes - in an ideal world we'd stop using incandescent lamps next year, drive electric tour busses & wagons and give everyone a pink unicorn for home use however, as you probably know when you look in your venue - you have 100's of conventionally lamped fixtures still in perfect working order with likely a few dozen spare lamps still to use. Now... You're bidding to replace some dimmers which will raise eyebrows anyway but if you consider that an LED fixture of any note will likely cost circa £600 (perhaps more) and you own 60 that you use regularly... That's around £30,000 plus rewiring your venue for hard power - buying 72 channels of dimming will be around £7000 plus some change. (Multiply that against every venue from church hall, school theatre, little theatre to large theatre in the UK alone!) If you were building a new venue from scratch then yes - LED should be in your planning (as indeed I did back in 2018 and will be doing for a new venue later this year) but converting a "conventional" venue isn't yet financially viable without government grants - something that the politicians haven't yet realised but then they're pre-occupied with vaccines, passports & making everyone drive an electric car (no one's told them yet that one charge of an electric cars uses roughly the same electricity as a house uses in one day - that's a lot more wind farms off the Norfolk coast & wiring infrastructure to support them!). Yes - it would be worthwhile planning to use some LED fixtures and include the means to use them (Chilli bypass can work well for that especially if you think of distributed dimming around the venue - that can reduce cabling costs alone) and to present a roadmap to your venue for gradual replacement but I don't think a miracle will happen in the next 2 years & conventionals will "disappear" - this conversation has been happening for 10 years at least (and I left CTS back in 2017 just as 'save tungsten' was happening) - there's simply not the financial means after the last 12 months to do it, the ball has been kicked down the road at least 3 years.

In truth, from a conversation I had with a Strand Field Engineer in the 90's - you could never have a fully loaded system apparently. The College Theatre in Coventry (now The Albany) when I was Chief LX bought some MMS spares from The Albery including a switch mode PSU rack to replace the old Belix transformer power rack - I expressed an interest in fully loading the desk using the parts we had (which were originally The Belgrades desk) and The Albery parts inlcuding the tape drive. The engineer showed me the engineering equivalent of your cards (I'm guessing) which detailed the buss loading and PSU loading for the modules & it transpired that the Belix power crate was the limiter and so you couldn't do things like a tape drive, remote control, double density memory, twin channel controls in the same rack because there would never be enough power. He was certainly adamant that even with the configuration we ended up with - we could't run the tape drive as we'd have to unplug the memory module and VDU module to operate it, he took it away with him for a wee stash of spare parts that "fell out" of his kit :P Interestingly, Strand never fitted the switch mode power crate to older Belix systems - we were the only system to do it because they knew we couldn't afford a newer desk. The upgrade served for another two years before some money was found to buy a spanking new Strand 430 (which is still doing service with a small amateur group in Coventry - at least it was!).

From a conversation I had with Keith at the time - they were never available in quantity as a spare, they bought what they needed for the production sales & for the US Chauvet version (I think they called it The Tiger) and that was it. Whether you'd have any luck on a US Tech based forum?

I do indeed have a cable - Keith sourced it for me about 5 years ago & it lives with my 'slave' Diablo but I'm not eager to sell the cable to be honest. I never used the cable (nor ever had to show a customer hpw to use it) in all the time that Diablo was on sale to be honest. That being said - I know if I sold it, I'd need to use it for one of my customers.

Don't hold your breath - I sold a couple of their desks in my previous life that had 'expansion' ports or VGA ports but the hardware was never available. The explanation came from one of the support engineers in Holland - the desks were designed & supplied not to a submitted specification but often from what the Chinese manufacturing plants owner thought might sell well based on what he'd produced for someone else. Case metalwork was designed with flexibility in mind so sometimes gaps were left for using it with another design... ETC fell foul of this allegedly when they asked a chinese supplier to price supplying the case castings for the Source 4 when trying to rationalise costs...

From past experience with HighLight/ShowTec kit - don't worry about newer firmware, the update cycle for ShowTec used to be very long for their smaller desks like this. There probably never was a manual for the 512-2496 either as it's just likely that the size of the desk was doubled from 12 to 24 channels & from 48 fixtures to 96 (or something like that). The software looks a bit like the Strand 200 plus & stands a decent chance that the two share a software core (this happens a lot with Chinese imports) & perhaps some internal hardware if you catch my drift? Did you eMail HighLite in the UK or Holland? I usually had better results when I dealt with Holland but even back then - software/manuals support was always patchy because they were simply dealing with materiel sent them from the chinese factory - so I wouldn't expect much. If it's working - it will go forever but it's very unlikely the software will evolve.

Give Keith at Zero88 a quick call - he might know the right part number or an equivalent as Lightprocessor falls under his purview. I've serviced Paradims before now but never scrapped one so I ought to have some spare clips too - let us know if you find out which it is? :)

Thanks Kevin - I did briefly consider it yesterday but I'm not certain there would be enough salvageable to make it worth the effort of collection. I've not sold any Sirius spares apart from keys (I have keys, knobs & faders in stock) but perversely Lightmaster & XLS instead! I could really do with knackered old Beta 1's (a rarity indeed!) with DMX interfaces as I always get asked for those :)

yeah - just had a look at the Patt 123 under my desk I'm slowly breaking for parts and they look to the same.

Yeah - they're almost indestructible (which is bad news for me in a way) and I keep 4 as 'slave' units to loan to folks whilst repairing other dimmers. When I worked for CTS, my heart always sunk when I was asked to quote for new lighting "stuff" (because as most folks said "These dimmers look so old...") and I discovered they were Beta 1's - the sale often became a new desk and perhaps a demux because the Beta's could be serviced back to good working order.

Yeah - very nasty - presumably a loose crimp on of the choke connections - it used to happen occasionally with Beta 2's :(

Thanks for the "plug" Kevin :) I spoke to Jamie last week & explained something else for him to look for that might solve the issue before he resorts to letting me have a look at the unit :)

But you still need to get the screen onto pin 8 in the plug :( If the cable has 8 cores internally - you don't need the screen. For the voltage levels involved - the 'noise protection' offered by a screen won't be needed - trust me.

It'll be the transformer for that pair of channels has failed - the Beta 3 was redesigned with transformers to replace the old sync resistors. It has the benefit that the rack will always work if there's a valid supply on any of the phase inputs. The transformer is relatively easy to replace but the main board has to come out of the rack to do it - total time for the repair is about 30 minutes. Your local Zero88 dealer should be able to supply the replacement transformer if you feel competent de-soldering or you can let someone else repair it *whistles and points at his own profile* ;)

The blue handled module is for the 600W GKV lamp and to be honest when I was managing a hire fleet of Pacifics with these fitted we never had issues with lamps creeping out. The biggest "issue" was actually getting the lamp seated properly on the initial fit - there's a lot of resistance against the internal clips and very often that last 1/42 was enough to make a difference and stop it working. Your issue might suggest that you may just have some lampholders that need replacing - I would also check that you have the correct lamp - the GKV was only available (if memory serves) as a 600W or 800W version not 575W. They should look like this. The indentation you can see toward the bottom should engage with a sprung "finger" in the lampholder I believe - that your's are not suggests a lampholder issue.

The CCT Regal 6 is a "rebadged" Zero88 BetaPack 1 - the internals are the same but a different colour paint finish and legending. As such, they're fairly reliable (I don't believe CCT reworked any of the electronics) so it was probably something as simple as a crash of the PIC on the DMX board or just a large enough power spike induced on the data lines that got mis-interpeted by the DMX interface. It would be worth popping the back cover off each dimmer to check the main PCB isn't damaged or showing signs of burning (yeah - they're so durable they'll work for a while when damaged!) or get someone who knows the inside of Zero88 kit to do it for you.

Also... Depending how long the corroded battery has been left on the PCB - the acid can eat along the tracks that run under the battery "travelling" under the solder resist. I've repaired a couple of Demux 48's before now where corroded tracks were a couple of inches away from the battery and needed 'creative' repairs.

Plus 1 for the Anyscene - cracking little device for this sort of application and they will network if you have two or more entry doors to the area.

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.

There isn't a battery compartment as such - if your desk as has a VGA output, it could well be a Mark 2 with an easy to swap battery and as Kevin pointed out the Zero88 forum has some help there. If it's a Mark 1 desk then it's more complex as the mainboard needs to be removed to change the battery - daunting if you're not confident with a soldering iron. As Kevin says - I am "local" to you and more than happy to help out with repairs and stuff like that - my details are in my profile.

It looks like a generic machine that you can buy under various brand names so there are two issues you need to check through.. As Kevin says - check your DMX patch and it should certainly be possible to patch any fader on the Frog to any DMX desk assuming the desks battery is ok and retaining the patch table (otherwise you'll set the address now but when you power cycle the desk overnight - it will forget). The second thing to try is plugging the machine directly in to the desk output (there are two DMXoutputs on the Fat Frog and both are useable) so that the machine is at the start of the DMX Chain. The reason for trying this is the DMX Transceiver chips on these machines (as with many lower priced LED's) are very susceptible to any noise or voltage induced on the 0v rail of the DMX and so can make them unpredictable. If plugging straight in to the desk makes it behave (and assuming the desk is OK) then you will need some sort of buffer on your DMX chain between the last fitting and your smoke machine.