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Pearl 2004 Shape Generator

Posted: 29 Mar 2008, 10:26
by andimac
HELP!!! PLEASE!!!

I'm in the process of Programming a Pearl 2004 and on saving at approx 4 this morning for some reason the Shape Generator suddenly didn't exist anymore.

ALSO all the playbacks on the roller wheel stoped working too and the desk told me Warning unable to create memory.

On TOP of all this my lights wouldn't locate and palettes were doing nothing either.

I'm Fairly new to AVO (approx 3 weeks and then it was all pre-programmed for me already) and this is my first big programming session.

I put the personality disk into the drive but on trying to load Shape Generator the desk told me there was no sg.dat file on the disc.

I lost 3 nights work and not being sure of the desk yet I'm totally lost as to what to do.

I've done a Wipe All and re-programmed all my palettes etc and saved them on a New Floppy Disk and they're working fine now but there's still no Shape Generator...

HOWEVER The Personality Disk let me load all the attributes etc for the lights.

It's all Robe movers (2xSpot1200, 4xWash1200 and 6xWash250XT) if that makes any difference but it was working fine till then.

What am I doing wrong?

Posted: 29 Mar 2008, 16:08
by niclights
I don't think there's anything you're doing wrong but you've been very unlucky!

Most of the symptoms you describe suggest a hardware fault, but maybe something got corrupt in memory. Neither is good. Former might be more reassuring as an explanation but not if it needs hospitalisation! There's never any harm in opening up the console and checking all things are seated correctly.

Floppy storage is time consuming and with higher risk than more modern solutions but there are two things you can do in the future. First is always to format in the console. Second is to alternate saves between two floppies. If one goes wrong you only jump back to the previous save. Save as often as you can afford.


I'm not sure why you couldn't find SG.DAT - perhaps not on compressed disks, but I've just checked and it is definitely on uncompressed personality disk 1. Download this, unzip to floppy and use 'load new shape file' function. After doing this you should reset console (show will be unaffected).

HTH

Posted: 29 Mar 2008, 16:43
by andimac
Thanks Nic, idiots guide needed now.

I've Downloaded the Personalities files But now I can't fit them on one disc...

This is starting to annoy me now. any ideas?

Posted: 29 Mar 2008, 18:41
by niclights
They should fit on a standard 1.44MB disk, but to solve problem simply run the .exe file and extract to your hard drive. Find the sg.dat and copy it to a floppy.

Posted: 29 Mar 2008, 22:54
by andimac
All done and working now...

Thanks for the advice