VL 2500 Firmware

[gafftaper]

So, I've got a friend with some VL 2500's he's hoping to acquire used for next to nothing. They don't have a lot of use, but have some issues.

Two of them apparently have no firmware. They just say "No Prog" when you try to turn them on. Looks like you need to build a serial port to DMX adapter, load the software on a Windows 2000 computer and load it up. Anyone ever done this?

One of them apparently has a bad sensor on the Magenta flag (according to the boot sequence test results). From what I see on the parts diagram, it looks like this is a really simple project to swap out a small sensor board attached to the color mixing unit. Just a couple screws and a cable.

Any recommendations or tips for these projects? They both seem fairly simple.

 

[dbaxter]

Looking at the Pegasus software manual, it does appear that you can use a usb port and any Windows version. You'll be very hard pressed to find a computer with a serial port and more so with one running 2000. But that aside, it does look like you'll need to get that special cable. Perhaps if you dig deeper in the Pegasus site than I did, you'll find a pinout diagram to let you build your own. Bottom line, you should be able to load the firmware into the VL2500.

 

[soundlight]

Magenta No Sensor can mean any one of a huge number of things in my experience, but it is 90% going to be that color sensor PCB as you found. In older units the board was not protected well from the heat of the lamp and would be damaged. The newer models and retrofitted old models had a metal heat shield installed to help this problem. I remember installing some of these heat shields sometime probably around 2013-2014 on some rental stock units.

 

[gafftaper]

Looking at the Pegasus software manual, it does appear that you can use a usb port and any Windows version. You'll be very hard pressed to find a computer with a serial port and more so with one running 2000. But that aside, it does look like you'll need to get that special cable. Perhaps if you dig deeper in the Pegasus site than I did, you'll find a pinout diagram to let you build your own. Bottom line, you should be able to load the firmware into the VL2500.

Thanks! I actually have a perfectly working Windows 2k laptop with a serial port... takes two men and a boy to lift it... but it's working great. I ordered a RS232 to RJ45 adapter on Amazon and I already have an RJ45 to DMX adapter so I'm hoping that's all I need.

 

[gafftaper]

Magenta No Sensor can mean any one of a huge number of things in my experience, but it is 90% going to be that color sensor PCB as you found. In older units the board was not protected well from the heat of the lamp and would be damaged. The newer models and retrofitted old models had a metal heat shield installed to help this problem. I remember installing some of these heat shields sometime probably around 2013-2014 on some rental stock units.

Thanks! We'll order a PCB and see if we can get some heat shields too.