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Author Topic: Christie 2210 - "Unable to communicate with ICP Board" Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 10-08-2015 11:00 PM                        Exactly fifteen days ago I went to start my show and the projector turned the red error lights on and said "Unable to communicate with ICP Board". I was told that I had to replace the ICP board, which I did, and everything once again worked fine for the past week and a half. I lost four nights of shows (Wednesday through Saturday). And everything works fine once again, for a week and a half. Tonight I went to start my show and the projector turned the red error lights on and said "Unable to communicate with ICP Board". *boggle* I actually replaced the ICP board once before, not quite a year ago, as previously discussed here: http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/f16/t002109.html So what the H-E-Double-hockey-sticks could be going on here? Am I just getting "lucky" with defective ICP boards? One other interesting thing that I discovered tonight when I tried to run the Interrogator to gather log files to email to the tech. I can't run the Advanced Interrogator. When the Interrogator window comes up I can click on the Basic Interrogator and run that, and I can click on the Download to USB and that works, and I can click on the X that closes the Interrogator window. But clicking on, near, and anywhere around the Advanced Interrogator button gets absolutely no response. I talked to the tech on the phone tonight and he's apparently going to pass the log files that I can get from the Basic Interrogator on to Christie in the morning and we'll see what develops from here. The tech told me to try re-seating the ICP board so I did that, and now I can't re-marry it. "Unable to communicate with ICP Board" and the marriage light stays red. My ghawd -- THREE defective ICP boards in the course of less than a year on a projector that plays only one show per night most of the time? Is that even possible?  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 10-09-2015 03:31 AM                     Out of curiosity, do you have any other Christie series 2 projectors? If so...can you move the "defective" ICP to one of them and see if THEY can communicate with it? If it were me, at this point, I'd back EVERYTHING up and reinstall the Christie firmware and do a COMPLETE reinstall of everything, particularly the TPC and PIB stuff too. 4.2.2 is definitely stable Christie (any previous 4.x isn't). 4.3.1 is out but less than a month and 4.3.0 was only available for 2-weeks or so before being yanked). Since you also have some sort of TPC issue...it may just be better to ensure whatever is bad in your system is pushed out or found out. I've had 2 or 3 ICPs fail over our entire DLP line up (all three brands). One was nearly a DOA (voltages were never stable and would throw up errors), one failed on upgrade (it was an early series 2, circa 2010). While I've heard of ICPs being somewhat problematic earlier in life, we have not had a particular problem with them.  |  IP: Logged Jim Cassedy Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1661 From: San Francisco, CA Registered: Dec 2006 posted 10-09-2015 01:47 PM                     quote: Frank Cox My ghawd -- THREE defective ICP boards in the course of less than a year on a projector that plays only one show per night most of the time? Is that even possible? Well, yes and no, I guess- - A couple of years ago I worked at a screening room with an NEC NC2000C that was a little over a year old and was used only a few hours a day several days a week. (We were still running a lot of 35mm back then) One day I turned it on and go the "ICP BOARD FAILURE" message. Over the next 4 days, we went through two techs and 3 ICP board replacements, and still had problems. It wasn't till, out of desperation, they started pulling and swapping just about every part in the projector, that they found the cause. Long story short- - they eventually discovered that there was a flaw in the connector on one of the multi-conductor cables that connected to the ICP board. There was an almost microscopic break in one of the conductors, right at the point where the pin had been crimped on. (Actually, the insulation was crimped fine, but there was a miniscule gap between the wire conductor and & plug pin.) So, it apparently made contact well enuf for almost two years to work, but then, perhaps by thermal cycling or whatever, the conductor finally pulled far enough away from the pin that it stopped working. I don't know what particular function that 'bad pin' had, but it showed up as a board failure, and not a COMM failure. Even though the machine was out of warranty, either NEC or the seller didn't charge for the fix since they acknowledged that it was a manufacturing error. In fact, once they found the problem, they said were surprised that we hadn't had problems sooner than when they finally started happening. - - and we wound up with our original ICP board, which actually hadn't "Failed".  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-10-2015 01:12 PM                     I've had so few failures among the 335 NEC's I installed that I can still count those failures on just one hand. Some projectors are now 6 years old too! I'll be moving to the second hand at the next repair though. This does NOT count the power switch failures because none of those have ever taken a projector down for more than an hour. Mark  |  IP: Logged Stephan Shelley Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 854 From: castro valley, CA, usa Registered: Nov 2014 posted 10-10-2015 01:31 PM                     Make sure to reseat the PIB board too as the communications go through it. The internal router is located on the PIB board. If the "bad" ICP checks out okay in another projector you may be looking at a bad back plane. You can install the ICP from the 2210 into a 2220 or 2230. You will have to do a forced ICP firmware upgrade for it to work. You can go the other way as well.  |  IP: Logged Marco Giustini Film God Posts: 2713 From: Reading, UK Registered: Nov 2007 posted 10-10-2015 06:39 PM                     quote: Jim Cassedy Even though the machine was out of warranty, either NEC or the seller didn't charge for the fix since they acknowledged that it was a manufacturing error. That's quite nice! quote: Mark Gulbrandsen This does NOT count the power switch failures because none of those have ever taken a projector down for more than an hour. Glad to know that all your customers are located within 15 minutes from your location. I tend to drive a lot.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 10-10-2015 07:37 PM                        I've put in another ICP board and everything is now running as it should. It seems that when the ICP board quits, re-seating it doesn't help but installing another one does, so doesn't that eliminate the backplane as a source of the problem since when I replace the ICP board with a good one, all is well. Everything's working now; hopefully it will continue to do so. I've been getting lots of experience changing that board if nothing else.  |  IP: Logged Marco Giustini Film God Posts: 2713 From: Reading, UK Registered: Nov 2007 posted 10-11-2015 05:06 AM                     it's a long shot but maybe the bad connection would cause the existing ICP to get its OS corrupted. Maybe it just needs to be fully recovered (it's a different procedure than the software upgrade).  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 10-11-2015 06:40 AM                     Again...have you tried putting a "failed" ICP in another projector to see if it works there?  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 10-11-2015 12:27 PM                        I have only one projector so I have no way to do that. All I can do is change the board in the one that I have.  |  IP: Logged

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