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Author Topic: Uncooperative NEC series 1 touch panel Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 02-23-2017 11:25 AM                        I've just finished installing a donated NC2500S in our little screen, to replace an iS8-2K that succumbed to the green stripes of death. Everything went surprisingly well, given all that could have gone wrong (in particular, because the machine had been in storage for years, I was fearing that the gore board would be NFG and no secure link, but it woke up just fine and accepts TLS encrypted content from our cat862 with no complaints). About the only banana skin presented was the infamous "AC fan off" bug, which was solved by poking the vane sensor with a screwdriver to persuade it to poke the microswitch more effectively. However, I can't get the effing touch panel to work - it says communication error and won't talk to the projector. I strongly suspect that it's looking for the wrong IP address (I changed the projector and TI addresses and subnet mask to work with our LAN), but because the top pulldown menu won't display on DCC on the touch panel, I can't find any way of changing these settings. This is low priority and I'm not going to burst into tears if the touch panel stays broke, but the perfectionist in me would like to revive it if it can be done without tearing any hair out or needing the IT skills of Grace Hopper. Any hints or suggestions gratefully appreciated. I've checked all the obvious things (power is good, obviously, and the green LED on the ethernet jack lights up, so presumably the physical cat5 link is OK, too). I can't find any USB jack to connect a keyboard and mouse, so exiting DCC and changing its network settings by talking to Windows CE directly doesn't seem to be an option, either.  |  IP: Logged Jason Raftery Film Handler Posts: 72 From: San Diego, CA, USA Registered: May 2011 posted 02-23-2017 09:50 PM                     Is this the NEC NC-TA6401 touch panel? If so, there should be a USB port or two hidden on the rear underside portion not too far from the DC power jack. It is possible to exit DCC and get to Windows by logging in as a service user and tapping on the [X] button in the menu bar. Is the CAT5 cable from the touch panel going to the projector's internal network switch or one of the external RJ45 ports on the projector? The 2500Ss I service are configured for the former specifically to allow a touch panel to be moved from one machine to another without needing to reconfigure the network info.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 02-24-2017 10:47 AM                        Thanks Jason. Yes, it's that model, and it's connected to the internal LAN jack on the router card. The weird thing is that this (used and mothballed) projector came with two touch panels. The other one has a knackered screen (purple, dim and flickering), but connects to the projector and runs DCC flawlessly. So there clearly isn't anything wrong at the projector end. The one with the good screen, however, won't communicate. Both are running the same version of DCC touch panel (2.1.0.0). I'm wondering if whoever bought the projector new got it with this touch panel, could not get the touch panel to work, NEC then sent them a replacement, and this is the one which now has the bad screen. When I'm next at that theater and have a moment, I'll have a more careful look to find the USB jack, and see if I can get a keyboard into it (so I can ctrl/alt/del and get to the Windows desktop that way), and try to make some progress that way.  |  IP: Logged Jason Raftery Film Handler Posts: 72 From: San Diego, CA, USA Registered: May 2011 posted 02-24-2017 11:54 AM                     I had one of those touchpanels lose its network settings once and they had to be re-entered within Windows CE. It definitely can be done, especially if you have a "working" panel to compare the network settings against. The one with the purple/flickering screen probably has a bad backlight--seems to be a common problem with these. I've yet to find an economical way to replace the backlight on the NEC touch panels but would be interested to hear if anyone else has.  |  IP: Logged Leslie Hartmier Expert Film Handler Posts: 100 From: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Registered: Jul 2012 posted 02-25-2017 05:52 PM                     I was in a position where I had to try to figure out why a TPC was not connecting, and what I tried was to get out of DCC, set the IP address in CE to a non-cinema network, plugged it into the external network switch, ran IE, and went to Slashdot to confirm that there wasn't anything faulty with the network card (there wasn't, and I quite enjoyed some of the posts). I then stole a TPC from a different machine, plugged it in to ensure that the issue was not on the internal network hardware, (it wasn't, as the TPC worked fine). I followed up by resetting the settings back to the way it was before the external network step, then I used my Mapmaster to make sure all the wires in the cable were okay, and I found that the issue was the cable. Changed the cable, and it all came up. Yeah, I should have started with that, but it never occurred to me that someone might have pinched the cable, then covered it with the black wrapping at the junction of all the cables. It also could be as simple as the cable on the internal router/switch/hub/token ring ( ) isn't completely plugged in too, of course. Leslie  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 02-25-2017 06:28 PM                        So near and yet so far. I found the USB jack (thanks Jason) - it was buried behind the pillar on which the panel is mounted. So I connected a keyboard and with that got out of DCC and into the CE desktop. Firstly, this is the error that DCC gives: And these are the network settings: In the LAN card settings, it is set to ask for a DHCP address. Here's the frustrating thing: the other panel, with the bad screen but which will communicate with the projector, won't stay lit long enough for me to get out of DCC, open a command window, execute ipconfig /all and snap a picture. It flickers out before I can get that far. I've tried three times. So I have no way (that I can see) of finding out what the network settings are on the panel that will communicate. Leslie - I don't think the problem is a bad cat5 wire, because the panel with the bad screen will communicate through it.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 02-25-2017 09:19 PM                        Could you hook a real computer to the touch panel and/or projector and run nmap or arp-scan on it? IF so, you might learn something interesting.  |  IP: Logged Jason Raftery Film Handler Posts: 72 From: San Diego, CA, USA Registered: May 2011 posted 03-01-2017 09:01 AM                     Leo, try setting the panel to use static IP 192.168.254.253 and subnet mask 255.255.255.248. Leave the gateway field blank. These are the settings that worked on the one I encountered that decided to suddenly start looking for a DHCP lease after a power outage one day.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 03-02-2017 10:14 AM                        That worked! Thanks so much Jason - very much appreciated. Those settings carefully noted in case it loses them again.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-02-2017 11:24 AM                     The bad screen could be a CCFL back light power supply issue. It is doing exactly the same thing the Planar PT1545 monitors I am fixing do. You get a brief flash of an image when turning it on, then the image disappears. If you bounce a flashlight off the face of the screen you can see the image is there. There was a thread about a month ago about this. Its a very common issue with Planar's. Since CCFL is so 1990's, I am not repairing the CCFL power supplies in these nor replacing it with a new separate supply... which does actually fix the issue but is too large to fit neatly inside. I am replacing both of the CCFL lights with LED lighting and a tiny little LED power supply. All of this including cracking the bloody case open takes about 90 minutes to do not counting the setting time for the silicon seal I use to bond the LED strips into the CCFL reflectors and the tiny power supply to the back of the screen. Anyway, bouncing a flashlight off the screen will tell you if that's the issue. Mark  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 03-03-2017 10:22 AM                        Thanks Mark. With these 11-year old panels, if the light goes on the now good one, I think I'll just get a $50 no-name tablet off the boat from China, install DCC on it, log it on to the booth's main LAN via wifi and find some way to mount it on the bracket on the projector. In that booth the touch panel is actually useful to have, because it's reachable from the operating position for the 16mm projector, and we have one regular rental customer who likes to show 16mm and DCP interchangeably. So the ability to close the NEC's dowser and then start a 16mm show without moving is useful. But open heart surgery on a touch panel to replace the light source is above my electronics ability (or at any rate, confident ability).  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-03-2017 03:11 PM                     Yes, you certainly could do that as well as have a central booth computer like all my customers have. That not only allows DCC, but also remoting in ability if your tech needs to look at the projector from where ever he may be. But if you do want to fix the panels the kit is all of $15.00. I just completed my 9th Planar PT-1545 rebuild and the image quality is lots better than it was with CCFL back light.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 03-03-2017 03:35 PM                     So you say the repair is 90 minutes plus $15 in materials?  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-03-2017 04:43 PM                     The first one might take a couple hours. Just getting the first one open with spudging tools is a learning experience. Best way would be to line em up and do them all at once in production line fashion. I use black RTV to glue the LED strips into the CCFL reflectors and you have to allow that to cure. I also silicone the tiny power supply to the back of the LCD assembly, and it has to be positioned just so since it has to clear the LCD interface board. I will send you pictures off site in a while. Mark  |  IP: Logged

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