Pearl-Saving palette names

[Beaker]

Can you save page and palette names in the Pearls cache so they come up the way you want them every time or can you only do it in the boards memory that is saved to the floppy. I want to write a set of palettes for my mac 250's that stay the same always and are recallable on the softkeys instead of the flash buttons. As it is now i'm rewriting the same palettes for the most part every time I load the board in a different patch config.

Secondly, I asume i will need a keyboard and monitor in order to edit the titles on the softkeys.

[CoenCo]

**Question 1
You can edit the personality files. You should be looking for the tag PFTABLE.
It may look something like this (martin mac250)
PFTABLE "Color" -1 3
"White" 1 0
"Red" 2 54
"Amber" 3 78
"Yellow" 4 18
"Green" 5 3c
"Cyan" 6 24
"Blue" 7 6c
"Lavendel" 8 90
"U.V." 9 48
"Magenta" 10 60

Once you've edited the personalities, you can create a custom cachefile which you can load in the console. It will stay there even after a wipe-all.
(perhaps the 2008 software no longer has a cachefile, I only know the 2004 soft)

*Question 2
It would be best to have a monitor and keyboard attached, but if you're carefull you can do without.
Hold Avo, pres softkey E "Set legend" (long time ago, could be wrong here)
Swop button 1-26 = A - Z
Add button 1-26 = a - z
swop or add 30 = " "
keypad = 0-9 .

After editing the legend press enter exit. After that the display should update with the new text.

good luck

[niclights]

To add, the preset add and softkeys are interlinked & cannot be separated although obviously palettes 121-200 are only available on softkey or numeric.

I'm not totally sure but I don't think the names in PFTABLE get converted to legend.

[Beaker]

OK, I get it. Wow. Sounds like a challenge but do-able. So, first I need access to the individual Martin personalities for my spots and my washes. I used cachebuilder to create the current profiles in the board. I asume the file that it created has the profile info i'm looking for. Do I simply open it with an editor like Word or Notepad?

BTW- thank you Nic for helping me through the nube years.

[niclights]

Yes. Use notepad. You can find all in the online library.

[Beaker]

Cool. I'm on my way out to Vegas to put my sound engineer hat on for a major festival there this weekend. Will get back to this early next week. Wont really know what i'm looking at till I pull it up in notepad but i asume there will be enteries for the pages, names, and dmx values. so are they actual dmx values that are typed in? if so, I guess I will need a value table from Martin.

[CoenCo]

The cachefile createbuilder creates a file that only the pearl can read. You need to edit the uncompressed personalities (filename ending in .R20). The cachebuilder builds a cache using the .R20 files.

The values you have to edit are the raw DMX values, but you have to convert them to HEXadecimal first. You can use windows calculator: Menu->view->scientific. Make sure Dec(imal) is selected, enter the DMX value i.e. 127 (for 50%), then click Hex. Result = 7F.
If you happen to have OpenOffice (a free MSoffice substitute) you can use Calc(the excel substite) to convert a column of values with the formula: =dec2hex(origin_cell)


Good luck

to Niclights:
I just tried it in the simulator, they do load actually . you might have to set fixture type to the correct type: focus->pages->options->set fixture type.