Control/Dimming Golden Oldies - Strand Lightboard M

[achanner]

Hi All,

Currently working on a refurb project for a local chuch venue.

Anyone know their way around the inside of a Strand LBM?

Im having memory faults which no amount of clearing, disconnecting Maxcaps and hard resetting seems to cure!

The desk works a treat otherwise and I dont wanna throw the old gal in the skip.

If theres any takers, ill post more detailed info...

Cheers,

Anthony

 

[Dionysus]

I use a perfectly operational LBM.. Unfortunately the extent of the repairs I've needed to give it are regular cleanings and replacement of the floppy drive. Well and fixing the monitor several times because we can't find a new old-school monitor for it.
It doesn't do everything the way many newer consoles can like the 500 series, but for it's day in age it's a wicked console.

What kind of memory faults are you having???
Are they when loading/writing to disk? I've had that, which is why I replaced the drive. I've only ever had any other memory problems after a bad power serge. Fortunately all I had to do is wipe it clear, Hard Reset it, run diagnostics, set it back up from scratch, and have at it. After that, no problems.

 

[achanner]

Hi Dionysus,

I didnt think there would be many LBMs left in use so its good to see - The venue i'm working for is a small church venue with big ambitions to be the choice for community theatre for Amateur Drama, concerts etc in the area as the main Opera House in town is expensive for them these days.

I took away the LBM to give it a good service as it hadn't been touched for years, and its working well on my bench apart from showing a memory fault when I run the Diagnostics. At the moment i've found it manifesting itself when I record Cues. If I record sequentially 1 to 10, cues 1 to 6 work fine, but 7 - 10 record as (something like) 22.9, 22.8, 22.7 etc. When playing them out I find that cue 22.9 is what I recorded as 10, 22.8 is 9 etc. Also when using the time keys trying to record fade times, one key seems to activate a sequence of time button keystrokes, and so I am unable to record times as it triggers a syntax error straight away.

I have tried the 'Hard Reset' as described in the manual - IE removing the Backup Board, and clearing out the memory, which seems to work, the memory is corrupted on restart, and everything clears down fine, but this problem still remains.

I really don't know where to go from here, and it seems a shame to skip the desk when its so nearly there. Unfortunately it seems at the moment Strand support is quite hard to come by now especially on older kit.

Any help that anyone might be able to offer will be most appreciated.

Cheers,

Anthony

I use a perfectly operational LBM.. Unfortunately the extent of the repairs I've needed to give it are regular cleanings and replacement of the floppy drive. Well and fixing the monitor several times because we can't find a new old-school monitor for it.
It doesn't do everything the way many newer consoles can like the 500 series, but for it's day in age it's a wicked console.

What kind of memory faults are you having???
Are they when loading/writing to disk? I've had that, which is why I replaced the drive. I've only ever had any other memory problems after a bad power serge. Fortunately all I had to do is wipe it clear, Hard Reset it, run diagnostics, set it back up from scratch, and have at it. After that, no problems.

 

[rschwimmer]

We are digging through the old manuals, and software that we can find to see if I can get something to help you out with that ole girl.

I will let you know.

You can shoot me an email @ [email protected]

 

[achanner]

Hi Randy,

Excellent news, I guess its the original training in me - I started on a Strand Gemini in my first theatre and I hate to see old stuff destined for the 'dusty shelf under stage' or worse, the skip.

Looking forward to seeing what you can dig up.

Cheers,

Anthony

 

[DimmerDotCom]

Did you clear the console exactly like I describe here: Consoles

If so, and diasgnostics still show a problem, you may have a memory chip going or some other problem in the CPU section of the CCU like corrupted EPROMS, a failing regulator, etc.. Also, check the internal LAN cable for burning.

As for monitors, there are plenty of cheap RGB/CGA to VGA convertors available. You can also use the composite video output on the rear BNC.

 

[achanner]

Hi Maurice,

We have conversed over email about this desk, and yes, I have cleared it as you suggested on your site.

Unfortunately, I fear this LBM is looking like its in for retirement as they can probably more cheaply move to a PC based system than pay out for expensive repairs/parts for the LBM. I see it as quite a shame really if this is the case as I would have liked to teach tomorrows potential techs/designers (who come through this venue quite a bit) on a conventional board first before moving them onto a computer based solution.

Cheers,

Anthony

Did you clear the console exactly like I describe here: Consoles

If so, and diasgnostics still show a problem, you may have a memory chip going or some other problem in the CPU section of the CCU like corrupted EPROMS, a failing regulator, etc.. Also, check the internal LAN cable for burning.

As for monitors, there are plenty of cheap RGB/CGA to VGA convertors available. You can also use the composite video output on the rear BNC.