I have twenty of those scrollers that I have purchased from many different sources a few at a time. The model you have in the pictures, is the second generation of the original
chroma Qs. The dip switches indicate that it is self calibrating. The first generation had three rotary switches and were manually calibrating. In every other way they appear the same. They were manufactured by Spectrum engineering in Canada probably on the early 90s. Spectrum also manufactured the early
Apollo "S" series of scrollers, plus many other branded scrollers. Camelont in Sweden manufactured scrollers that used many of the same parts and designs for
Strand called the "Colour
call" but used a five pin
XLR. They also manufactured them for Rainbow in Germany. I have some of each and many of the mechanical parts are interchangeable. The one caution on the model you have is to make sure that you tape the ends of the scroll to the rollers. They have a small metal piece that is taped into the end of the scrolll and slips onto the
roller. When the
unit is calibrating at
power up, it will pull the scroll to the end at each end. it is not uncommon for the clop to jump off. If you place a small strip of
gaff tape around the
roller where the clip is attached it will keep it in place during calibration.
Those scrollers draw a max of 600 miliamperes when moving at their fastest. I have built about ten different supplies for them. The best is a Elation
DMX distributor with 8 outputs. four are 3 pin and four are five pin. I mounted a 12 amp 24 volt switching supply obtained from mpja.com to the top of the distributor and ran the 24 volts into the distributor. I changed out the
xlr connectors for 4 pin obtained at Mouser.com. Connected the
DMX to pins 1
thru 3 as usual and put the 24 volt on pin 4 with the
ground of the 24 volt added to pin 1.
All together, I have 61 scrollers of 7 different manufactures and models. All of them are running through a supply distribution
system that I built distributed to all of the electrics and various other positions. I run two different systems to each location. one is the standard 24 volt with
DMX on 4 pin. The other is Color Ram with supplies that I have built using the
circuit boards from the Ram supplies, but with my own much larger 24 volt supplies. On the Ram
system I have reversed the pin 1 and pin 4 on all of the scrollers and supply feeds so that 24 volts is on pin 4 not 1. In this way, if someone plugs the wrong
scroller into a different supply, there is no damage, it just doesn't work. My theater had this
system in for about 3 years this way, with no problems. I started on it over 10 years ago, but it took a little refinement over the years.