The Avolites Discussion Forum

Hiya,
I've recently aquired an old Pearl (pre 2000 -- boris 1 based, no VDU card) rather cheep, as it has some faulty faders, and none of the master/playback faders worked.
My initial thoughts being "that's probably just one of the encoder chips knackered, should be easy to fix the masters" so proceeded to swap the eight pin chip on the master fader board for one from one of the presets boards (I remember reading somewhere on these forums this being one of the suggested "things to try" if a bank of presets stopped working) However I can now only boot the desk into the AVOS (on starting up it cycles "energising the pearl" and refreshing the lcd about once every second -- on setting the AVOS jumper, it now goes into the AVOS), it would appear that somthing I've done has scrambled the main desk software.
It's showing current version as "AVOS V1.6 Jun 19 1995", the desk doesn't have a VDU card (just the socket on the back-plate!) and I'm not sure of the memory size (and as I can only see the AVOS, can do a software check!)
I'm wondering what version of the Pearl software the desk can take as is (ie without upgrades) Basically I can't afford to spend much money on the desk, especially until I can get the master+playback faders working, hence I want to get it back to a state where I can at least do this, then investigate replacing dodgy faders, then look at further software/hardware upgrades.

Thanks

Jamie

Hmmm. My advice on swapping the chip resulted in it blowing up in that particular case, but I hope that was due to operator error! At least noone said I was wrong to advise this...

I don't know whether doing something like this should be able to affect the software, but 'tis an old desk. Maybe the architecture was different.
I do think you should ask Avo about this first before going any further. Maybe it is possible that the software is fine, but it cannot start because it doesn't like the presets. Have you tried swapping the chips back/unplugging the ribbons from the analogue board/starting the desk in System mode?

Regarding new software AFAIK the only requirement is extended memory. This is denoted by an 'xFREE' as opposed to just 'FREE' in the LCD display. Obviously at the moment you have no way of seeing this, but it will be something you can check by looking at the hardware itself if I could tell you what to look for. I guess there is a good chance this desk does not have the extended memory though it should be possible to fit.

If problems are sorted and memory is fitted then you will need to upgrade the OS before you can burn the new program. I think this might have to be performed in a few steps from such an old AVOS. Memory is not serving me as well as I would like!


Given the number of issues/questions/potential problems, I would call or email Nick Forro or Olie about this.

Incidentally, what is the Serial No.? Sounds damn old!

Hi,
Yes I did see that previously this chip swapping had resulted in blown chips, but considering that it was attributed to user error, that the chip is a simple op-amp (thanks google!) and the cost of replacing the chips I thought it was worth a try!

Now for a quick update. After posting last night I had a bit more of a think (trying to work out what I might have killed!) and remembered that whilst I was inside the case I worked round all the chips making sure they were seated properly. I then thought "what if I disloged a power retained ram chip long enough from it's power source, that it scrambled the code on it", whislt this should affect the system code (I assume it's on Flash chips!) my thoughts were if I've annoyed the show memory, then when it reads at boot that might be causing it to fail, so have now performed a hardware wipe-all, then desk now boots properly again!

Now for the bad news! Swapping that op-amp hasn't made any difference to the masters (and the presets still work), and the desk says "99% FREE" So I'm guessing this means no extended memory Although as you say it's a really old desk, so this isn't surprising.

FYI It's PRL 046, currently running "Pearl 96, DOM V2.71", so it really is piece of history!

TTFN

Jamie

If you want some promising news, i own a Pearl with serial PRL010 and it happily runs the pearl2004 software (with memory extension and video card). Good luck

Mystic wrote:If you want some promising news, i own a Pearl with serial PRL010 and it happily runs the pearl2004 software (with memory extension and video card). Good luck

I belive PRL001 actually has the upgrades and is running 2004 software too