Theatre Stack Problems (pearl 2k running latest 2k4 software

[jmrld]

Hiya.

I'm currently lighting a production of Peter Pan in Southampton, and last night during the dress, come tech, come first time I'd actually had the theatre completely dark I had a couple rather big problems, hence was wondering if anyone else had seen this before. (and yes I know that trying to plot during the dress is not ideal, but this production seems to be a big string of problems).

First a bit of background.
The rig consists of 6 mac 500's running in Mode 4 (fixtures 001-006), a couple of rainbow colour scrollers(fixtures 007 & 008) and then about 130 dimmers (patched for convenient physical fader grouping)

First problem I had was the stack stopped moving to new cues (due to the plot and run I was doing I was building a state, recording it -using record stage- then snapping to the cue, clearing the programmer, then building the next state and so on).
This worked fine for act 1 .... we paused for a much needed coffee during the interval, then started on act 2. However I recorded down the first cue of Act 2, and the stack refused to snap to it (although I didn't notice, cleared the programmer and got evil looks from the director when the house lights came up..) So i repeated my build state, record, snap to and then spotted that the stack mimic on the VDU wasn't moving. However I found that I could jump back to previous cues.
As time was rushing on (and the actors getting increasingly restless) I then started recording the states down onto memories, so I would at least have somthing to work with at the end of the session (hoping that I'd be able to rebuild the stack, or at least rescue my act one states later).
This went fine until almost the end of the session, when after recording a memory (or there abouts, I'm still not exactuly sure of the timings) I completely lost control of the rig ... no dimmers, no intelegence (and rather helpfully I'd just recorded a blackout!!! -- to quell the directors wrath a quick shout over cans got the working lights on..) Resetting the desk made no difference to output (although checking the DMX view on the LCD showed the channels changing as I expected) By this stage the House LX was wonding what was happening, and found that their DMX merge/backup unit had locked into emergency state (hence why I had not control), and reseting this got control of the dimmers and scrollers back. However still no macs... (although by this stage they'd reset themselves, as if they'd lost and regained DMX) The only way I could get control of the macs was to swap the DMX cable over to universe 2, and repatch them I was then able to "Locate Fixture" and "LAMP OFF" before going home. I did however notice that after the failure, the original mac fixtures (001-006) couldn't access the Moving Light/Macro menu, hence I'm wondering if the desk had corrupted the patch profile on the original patching? The desk also appeared to have lost the contents of the playbacks -- ie the LED's were still lit to indicate that they'd been recorded, but pushing the faders made no difference to the output, switching between program and run mode made no difference to this either.

Thoughts on this would be appreciated as I'm about to head off to the theatre in an attempt to get enough programmed to run this evening... My plan being to reload the Patch backup disk (ie desk before I programmed any memories), program the show onto playbacks, create a couple backup disks of this, then build the playbacks into a stack -- hence in the worst case I should be able to run tonight off the playbacks manually...

As for causes I'm wondering about the power in the theatre (hence have taken the UPS off the server in my flat) as i couldn't think what else would cause the desk to go nuts, AND lock-up the theatre DMX backup unit, either that or a major problem with my pearl in which case I may have to resort to the Theatre's Expression... (I've also noticed the Macs reset a couple times for no apparent reason which also makes me cautious of the power)

Thanks in advance

Jamie

[jmrld]

Hiya

Just a quick update, based on my experiences yesterday...

I took in a UPS and powered the desk through this, then reloaded the desk from my patch only disk (after performing a WIPE ALL), and continued programming. I sucessfully got to the end of the day without any more desk problems (although the generics did randomly dip in intensity a couple times, corresponding to the MAC's resetting). I now have a working cue stack, with all my basic lighting states ... now just need to go back and add in the special effects!

On with the Show!