The Avolites Discussion Forum

We've been using a pearl expert for a while, but recently it's been showing some weird behaviour...

Once every 2 hours the desk acts as if someone has pressed the panel reset button, so impact on the actual light show is (thankfully) minimal. Upon further investigation i found that service->tests->memory check produced an error ("error on 916b4c"). Does this apply to the PC RAM or the PIC board(s) memory? Is this the cause of the sudden resets?

Does this desk need to be returned for a fix or is this user-fixable?


Cheers!

AFAIK the memory check is not relevant to the Expert, despite being there!

Can you explain further the actual symptoms. What happens that makes you think it is similar to a panel reset?
Obviously check everything is connected properly internally.

Ideally you should contact Service direct either by phone or mail.

i really don't know what to add about the symptons, it just spontaniously acts as if you would've pressed the reset button on the back of the console...
it happens both when the desk is idle (running a static light scene for a long time) or actively used, and there's no exact timing to it. during the reset output, chasers and shapes keep running, although button/fader/screen input is ignored during reset (but it snaps to the new values when it's fully on again).


i checked the connections multiple times, nothing seems off. i also ran a memory check of the pc ram from a boot cd

maybe i should try reinstalling all of the software?

ps: why would the memory check not be relevant? even if it uses the pc memory i'm pretty sure it still writes to it direct based on allocation adress, so the memory check in fact sounds like a very relevant feature...

Fair enough. Please contact service. There may be known issues with panel resets.

As for memory test:

Olie wrote:The memory test does not function on the Pearl Expert since it has no memory to test. This should have been removed from the software but got forgotten. The Memory Test result will always return an error and you can safely ignore this.

As Nick suggests, please contact our service department (ask for Nick Forro). They will be able to take you through a series of hardware checks to try and resolve the problem.

Re-installing the software will have no effect as this is a hardware problem.

The memory check is not relevant because it is a hang over from the old Pearl software and was left in by mistake. It will always fail whether your desk is healthy or not.