Who was after a Strand 500 series...?

[ianknight]

14 hours ago, gaspipe58 said:

Update.

 

We picked up the board last Wednesday 13 hours of which about 12 was driving! Too big for the boot, but I knew that anyway. Got in to our room in the theatre at lunchtime today. Applied power and got fan noise and blank LCDs. This was expected. opened it up, cleaned out the dust and checked the CMOS battery. It was dead. Put it back in and powered up - IT WORKS!! Apparently we're in 1980 but it works so I don't care. The CMOS battery will be replaced tomorrow which should cure it's time traveling tendencies. The NiMH battery will be replaced in due course - it's beginning to grow fur although not nearly as dead as the CMOS. We've tested it with a LED parcan and it works so all is good.

 

Winner, winner - Chicken dinner! (sorry been chatting too much with my nephews lately) 😛

That's fab news - nice one! 😄

[sunray]

13 hours ago, DrV said:

That's great news! I know I'm always bangin' on about this but don't delay replacing that dreaded NiMh. The damage they cause is really serious on a PCB like this with quite fine tracks. And just because it's showing a reasonable voltage is not a cause for complacency!

Dave 

That reminds me I only changed the battery in one desk back in summer, I must do the others after the seasons useage. No excuse they are sitting here waiting.

[gaspipe58]

On 12/1/2023 at 11:30 PM, DrV said:

... I know I'm always bangin' on about this but don't delay replacing that dreaded NiMh...

Dave 

No worries. By 'in due course' I really mean 'ASAP' 🙂 It was providing 1.8V which I think is quite impressive for a battery that may not have been charged for a good few years. However it also has the beginnings of a nice greenish beard so it has to go - hopefully this week. The new CMOS battery has cured the time travelling.

There are only two repairs needed. A fader knob is missing from the grand master and the button between the power button and the grandmaster faders is absent. Now looking for a clear enough picture to see what it is.

[ianknight]

6 hours ago, gaspipe58 said:

No worries. By 'in due course' I really mean 'ASAP' 🙂 It was providing 1.8V which I think is quite impressive for a battery that may not have been charged for a good few years. However it also has the beginnings of a nice greenish beard so it has to go - hopefully this week. The new CMOS battery has cured the time travelling.

There are only two repairs needed. A fader knob is missing from the grand master and the button between the power button and the grandmaster faders is absent. Now looking for a clear enough picture to see what it is.

I have a box full of fader caps, keycaps and button caps for the 500 series (original & updated) so once you know what you need - drop me a PM and a picture of the existing ones so I can match them.

[gaspipe58]

On 12/3/2023 at 7:03 AM, ianknight said:

I have a box full of fader caps, keycaps and button caps for the 500 series (original & updated) so once you know what you need - drop me a PM and a picture of the existing ones so I can match them.

Thanks Ian - will be in touch once we've solved the latest problem, or before if I get bored.

 

Latest problem! NiMH battery replaced. Board not going passed start screen! Much frustration. Swop to other vga out - STUPID BOY! Real problem is although everything seems fine according to the monitor the LCD displays don't. The back lights are all functional but there is no display. A short prayer - 

Oh Wisdom of the Blue Room do not fail me now.

 

Also on the same board as the NiMH beast I find another button cell not noticed before. It appears to be wrapped in clingfilm. Any advice before I do something even more stupid than plugging the monitor into the wrong port?

 

Tim 

[ianknight]

17 hours ago, gaspipe58 said:

Latest problem! NiMH battery replaced. Board not going passed start screen! Much frustration. Swop to other vga out - STUPID BOY! Real problem is although everything seems fine according to the monitor the LCD displays don't. The back lights are all functional but there is no display. A short prayer - 

Oh Wisdom of the Blue Room do not fail me now.

 

Also on the same board as the NiMH beast I find another button cell not noticed before. It appears to be wrapped in clingfilm. Any advice before I do something even more stupid than plugging the monitor into the wrong port?

@gaspipe58 that's the same problem as I have on the 520i that I've been looking at i.e. the LCD Displays don't display anything.  According to @Kazeja when I eMailed him - there's some resistors on the mainboard (not the PC mainboard) that might have failed & need checking. I'll look out his eMail over the weekend and send you a PM.

The button cell I don't think is a battery but the consoles ID chip but again @Kazeja will know better - that was the component that I believe Strand insisted was removed during the part exchange/upgrade deal they offered to get folks off 430's on to 500 series. I tried to get myself a second hand 430 from WhiteLight via Peter Threadgold (we were quite friendly - he used to work with my ex boss) but he said that although they had a 'skip full' the iD chips had been removed at Strands insistence. This might explain why there are so few 430's left?

And the monitor in the wrong output thing? Yeah - done that a few times too - a real heart stopper isn't it? ** laughs out loud **

[gaspipe58]

13 hours ago, ianknight said:

And the monitor in the wrong output thing? Yeah - done that a few times too - a real heart stopper isn't it? ** laughs out loud **

There were bad words. And worse words when I realised it was me being stupid.

 

The worrying thing about the displays is they were working until I replaced the NiMH battery.

 

And now for something completely different - Seems Big Clive's livestream has crashed. 

[Kazeja]

Regarding the button cell.
The "button cell" on the Control Surface (CS) processor is the security chip (displayed as 18 digits on the REPORT screen) which is embedded in your 36 digit password (a file STRAND.PAS) for enabling channels/applications. 

In order to retain your console's channels and apps, it would need to be transferred along with it's associated password to the newer console.

Regarding the Nicad.
From memory, the current running show and any modifications made by the operator were stored in RAM on the CS Processor.  This show and any changes made by the operator would be automatically transferred (backed up) to the hard drive on a regular (I don't know the frequency) basis during normal operation and saved as DAT files in the 220os directory.
If for any reason the console crashes or has a brown out, the Nicad (NiMH) would retain the RAM information on the CS processor so that on recovery, the latest information at time of the console going down would be retained (and subsequently automatically backed up to the hard drive).

I have removed the nicad on one of my consoles for peace of mind.  The console is not used in any anger or subject to loads of show critical operator modifications so I'm not really worried about the data on the CS processor.  Each time the console power cycles, it displays the message loading CS processor (as expected) as it cannot find any data on the CS processor and transfers the latest info it had from the hard drive to the CS processor.
This is something I'm prepared to live with especially on a 510 which has a multitude of screws to remove for internal inspecton.

For other 500 series consoles I've started to wire the Nicad "OFF" board so any leakage will not damage the CS processor.

So choices are either 
1. Mount Nicad back in it's original position on the CS processor and regularly inspect. 
2. Leave out the Nicad and live with the latest automatically backed up copy on the hard drive.  Try it a few times to see how it goes, you can always add the Nicad if operating this way is not acceptable.
3. Mount the Nicad safely off board.