My GDC SA2100 Won't boot

[Randy Stankey]

And at the risk of crossing the line into politics, I'd like to voice my complete agreement.

Not politics. Common sense! I agree with you, completely!

But, no, the idea that companies would go out of business if not for planned obsolescence is complete bunk.
It's just narrow minded thinking and short sighted business practice, only for short term gain on the part of a few people at the expense of the rest of us.

In order to make products cheaper and more plentiful, some shortcuts in manufacturing and overall quality have to be made but that doesn't mean that everything has to be thrown away. There's no reason in the world that things can't be repaired when possible and replaced only when needed. It could create a whole class of careers for people who fix and maintain things.

I think it's nothing more than a culture of selfishness and laziness that people justify with, as you say, "Greta Thunberg" logic.

[Frank Cox]

People used to repair stuff. I remember when I was a kid we had a tv and radio repair shop and a shoemaker on Main Street. Probably some other things too that I can't think of right at the moment.

When I first moved to Melville (25 years ago) there was a guy who spent a couple of days every week doing electronic repairs in the back of what was at the time the Radio Shack store (which turned into an independent electronic gadget store, and then into a cell phone store and then closed altogether when the owner decided to retire. There's a woman selling handmade jewellery in that spot now.) The repair guy quit doing that shortly after I moved here, though -- he said there just wasn't any work to be had.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Can I say something slightly unhelpful and off topic: we (mankind) need to stop this silly behaviour. World resources are not unlimited. We cannot skip a machine that costed energy and pollution to manufacture because someone is intentionally refusing to provide the SUPER-EASY fix to "repair" it. This should be forbidden by law. Not to mention the money involved into this but that's a secondary subject.

Many jurisdictions essentially already have some kind of laws against this, but it's not like they're really helping, in practice.

In the E.U. for example, you know, that dreadful thing you guys are now leaving in various stages, a company producing rather expensive stuff like this, has an obligation by law, to offer repairs that represent the real value of those repairs. So, by law, just giving someone the finger and telling them: this thing is unsupported, buy a new one, wouldn't fly.

This law has been used in the past to get the likes of Apple somewhat more in line, like offering repair programs for easily fixable problems with rather expensive phone gadgets, like broken batteries and screens. But this took considerable efforts, like pro-consumer groups who effectively sued and eventually settled with Apple.
But the problem really is always the same: Getting a big (from the perspective of the end-user) company in-line is an uphill battle. Like in this case: You don't have the budget for a new server, so what are you going to do? Sue them? No, you won't and they know it.

[Steve Guttag]

A couple of things have come down on the repair business, in general:

1. In the world of electronics, things are trending towards a single chip so that is about all a repair person could change. In reality, it isn't quite there yet but it is down to just 1 or a small handful boards for most anything...even TVs are down to 1-3, including the power supply. These boards are not designed with repairs in mind because of item 2:
2. Labor rates have continued to go up since the cost of living keeps going up so the cost of a technician that is capable of doing the work is going to be high yet the cost of manufacturing has gone way down due to automation, the aforementioned minimal components and cheap labor from elsewhere in the world.

The net result of 1 and 2 is it is cheaper to buy new than fix the old.

I think there is also 3rd factor of a desire of the current generation(s) to always have the latest and that the newer stuff is somehow inherently better. We recone speakers and used to have a vibrant business with it. We supported Altec, EV and JBL. That business is pretty much dried up. Nobody is going to fix their Altec speakers anymore...they'll just buy the latest garbage that is out there (you really have to buy pretty good stuff to top the likes of the A4, A5 and A7. Even JBL...it is as if the notion that a driver can be reconed for a fraction of the cost of a new driver, let alone an entire new speaker. Then again, there are now some cheap Chinese speakers built for cost, not performance so the result is really a downgrade but sold as an upgrade.

And, if there is a 4th category, it is a function of 1-3 and that is the availability of repair parts. Due to lack of demand, parts to fix older things (including speakers, for that matter) are no longer being offered. For example, JBL discontinued the recone kit for the 2245 woofer (used in the original 4645 subwoofer). Oddly enough, that is a rather well liked driver outside of the cinema industry due to its performance but again, there isn't enough demand for JBL to keep the recone kit in a small production. The monolith that is Samsung/Harman/JBL just can't wrap their heads around a small production run of parts.

So, when that driver fails, people either change the subwoofer entirely or they put in another 18" driver in the box despite the tuning being different.

The day of "Emmit's Fixit" shop is over though I would think that there would be a decent niche market for people that keep vintage electronics going as there is always nostalgia. I'm sure part of the trick though is the parts supply.

[Bruce Cloutier]

I am in agreement with the line of discussion and interestingly I should be oddly silent as I am in the manufacturer role. To start I have no investors. Investors only interest in activities is their ROI. But even an independent owner can be greedy. Here I think age plays a role and once you get to a certain point you no longer are driven to build the largest pile of cash you can possibly imagine. It is not ego that drives you anymore but comfort and satisfaction. But there is the survival concern. I think once a company goes public or acquires a sufficient number of large absentee investors their focus is no longer what is good for the customer let alone what is good for the planet. It amounts to greed.

We struggle with the JNIOR3. They last a long time but at this point the battery is dead. That basically is needed to retain log files and the clock through loss of power. So you can run with a dead battery. My bad (as they say) is that this battery is not (easily) replaceable. The issue we are running into is that the Flash memory wears out and we cannot get that component any longer. We would be happy to repair but by the time you ship that back to us (and product is literally covering the planet), we spend the time to repair and restore, and ship back, the cost is a ridiculous percentage of a new JNIOR4. And those have replaceable batteries, fresh Flash components, a lot better performance, etc., etc. Nothing is forever.

But I don't know what the best policies for this are. Nothing jumps out as us as logical and cost effective (from your perspective and the planet's). But we are not arbitrarily stopping support for the JNIOR3. It is, however, getting harder for us as we grow less and less familiar with our older products and customers push the product's capabilities with more challenging applications.

So I don't have an answer to offer, either for our own business or the society as a whole. All I can do at this point is to agree.

But I don't need a car that can park itself that has 100s of additional parts that will all fail sooner than later and require expensive repairs. Then they'll tell you that the feature no longer works and you need to buy a new car. I am actually looking into classical cars to where I can repair them myself. It used to be if it didn't start... do you have gas (clean the filter, check the fule pump) and spark (set the points, check the coil) then it will run. Running rough? regap the plugs, set the point gap. I have no idea today why there are tons of car parts stores when none of us can repair our cars.

You used to change bulbs, belts and gears in your film projectors. Bowling alleys have their own little machine shops to manufacture their own repair parts for their machines. My washing machine lasted 30 years. People think me the grumpy old man or technophobe when I try to explain how the technology that I was once excited about started out helping mankind but somewhere along the line took the wrong turn. (I think around the dot com bubble thing)

We can rant and complain. But is there anything that we can do?

You can skip the fancy tech and automation and hire a projectionist to turn lights off and on. But they get sick too and require repair and often replacement. Hmm...

See. I am not helping either.

[Harold Hallikainen]

Equipment End of Life is an interesting issue. I agree with Steve that a lot of this is due to the very low cost of automated assembly while repairs have to be done by hand. I started in electronics with hand wired vacuum tube equipment (I still run a vacuum tube RF power amplifier on amateur radio). The invention of the printed circuit board vastly reduced assembly costs. Surface mount components further reduced assembly costs. If the repair costs as much as the purchase of a new item, people will generally buy the new item. Retailers in California, Washington, and Europe collect a recycling fee when a product containing hazardous materials is sold. This fee then subsidizes the recycling of the product. This does not, however, subsidize the repair of a product, so consumers are still electing to replace instead of repair.

In general, I'd expect a product to be repairable to the state it was when originally purchased. It should be able to do what it did then, but not necessarily have all the features of the newest device. Manufacturers face component end of life issues, though. Sometimes an end of life part can be replaced with a new one with a firmware change. I recently did this for several products where a flash chip was discontinued. Other times, a hardware change is required. We had to revise a printed circuit board, update CPLD code, and update firmware when a display was discontinued. At some point, a manufacturer will question whether it's worth the redesign effort.

With digital cinema, we have security requirements getting tighter. We use FIPS requirements, and they keep getting tighter. Existing equipment is allowed to continue operation instead of being disabled, but it is assumed that the older equipment will eventually die reducing the security risk in the field. How much repair is permitted before it is considered remanufacture of a no longer approved product is a question.

My work computer is a Dell that is more than 10 years old. I've replaced the power supply twice. I also have a duplicate machine that I copy the disk image to once every month or so. We'll see how long I can keep it running. I hate to think about reinstalling all the applications I'm using.

Harold
http://w6iwi.org

[Marco Giustini]

We struggle with the JNIOR3. They last a long time but at this point the battery is dead. That basically is needed to retain log files and the clock through loss of power. So you can run with a dead battery. My bad (as they say) is that this battery is not (easily) replaceable. The issue we are running into is that the Flash memory wears out and we cannot get that component any longer. We would be happy to repair but by the time you ship that back to us (and product is literally covering the planet), we spend the time to repair and restore, and ship back, the cost is a ridiculous percentage of a new JNIOR4. And those have replaceable batteries, fresh Flash components, a lot better performance, etc., etc. Nothing is forever.

If the GDC in question had a fault that required a board to be sent back, repaired/replaced and returned and this was not worth the moneye, that would be a different story - still wrong and to be addressed but I would understand a bit more. Same for when some components are not manufactured anymore - even though I'd then move to why is that.

But in this case GDC are refusing to REINSTALL the OS on the customer's server because... sorry, there is no acceptable reason here. They just decided that version xx.xx is not supported anymore and the OP is stuck with a brick. This is nonsense.

[Armand Daiguillon]

Just a thought - could this gentleman's issue be fixed by simply cloning a drive from one of his other working servers ?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

But in this case GDC are refusing to REINSTALL the OS on the customer's server because... sorry, there is no acceptable reason here.

There is a very good reason, That OS is from about 2009 - 2010. The new OS is a DCI approved one that is vastly different from 7.8.3 and likely GDC can't send the old one out or they'd be going against their current DCI agreement. I have replaced several OS drives in the last few years and they always come with the DCI approved OS on them. Its way past time for him to get rid of the old stuff!

[Marcel Birgelen]

Yes, but there is a software-based upgrade path. So, if this server can simply be booted again, by fixing something that is most likely fixable with a simple "fsck -f", the owner of said hardware could perform the upgrade and be back in-line.

Just a thought - could this gentleman's issue be fixed by simply cloning a drive from one of his other working servers ?

I don't exactly know where GDC stores all its security certificates as opposed to the Doremi/Dolby machines, but I think this will cause some major problems with those certificates.

[Paul Gabriel]

Yes, but there is a software-based upgrade path. So, if this server can simply be booted again, by fixing something that is most likely fixable with a simple "fsck -f", the owner of said hardware could perform the upgrade and be back in-line.



I don't exactly know where GDC stores all its security certificates as opposed to the Doremi/Dolby machines, but I think this will cause some major problems with those certificates.

My issue is how to run the "fsck -f" nothing seems to open at the moment. Tried booting from "Linux Rescue CD" it doesn't get detected, tried booting from "Fedora core Os" same thing.
do you have any idea what next I should do?

[Marcel Birgelen]

Did you try to boot from CD only? The problem might be in the BIOS settings, where booting from CD is not enabled. Since the BIOS is password protected, have you tried to boot from an USB stick or USB DVD drive? I've seen a GDC server hanging on trying to boot from an external USB disk.

[Paul Gabriel]

Did you try to boot from CD only? The problem might be in the BIOS settings, where booting from CD is not enabled. Since the BIOS is password protected, have you tried to boot from an USB stick or USB DVD drive? I've seen a GDC server hanging on trying to boot from an external USB disk.

I plugged a USB drive to it, with a bootable Rescue CD in it, pressed ESC repeatedly to boot to the boot menu yet nothing.

[Paul Gabriel]

The error being displayed is not necessarily an unrecoverable error and can likely be fixed by running a manual "fsck" on the affected drive. Try to get somebody with some basic Linux knowledge over the floor and do the following:

Try to boot the machine using a Linux recovery medium via USB and try to run an "fsck" on the affected partition from there. Try to correct any errors that are found. If there are no hard errors, chances are that the machine will do a proper boot on the next boot cycle afterwards.

If you succeed into fixing the machine this way, please make sure to upgrade to any recent software release.

Using the Linux Rescue medium via USB and the fsck returns nothing. I did this "fsck /dev/sda 20200310_151814.jpg

[Marco Giustini]

likely GDC can't send the old one out or they'd be going against their current DCI agreement.

No Mark, that is not a "good reason". It's a forged reason - by the manufacturer or by the industry. There is no "good reason" (i.e. an actual difficulty in performing the task, such as "your server uses floppy disks and those are not around anymore") for this to happen. You are missing the whole point here.

If I had a Doremi with an old Dolphin on non-DCI firmware, I can still source all the files required to install and upgrade the system.
If I had a Dolby still set to non-DCI, I could still find the 4.3.5 install file and replace my hard drives - in fact, I could do that without anybody's assistance. IF I had to replace a cat 862 on such a system and the new one came with a later, DCI, firmware, I could easily upgrade the ShowStore to the matching DCI version.

But regardless what other manufacturers are doing, this is NOT a good reason for trashing a server. We can "ah-ha" the OP for not upgrading his server for years but this is NOT a "good reason" for the server to be skipped.

(BTW, your story about mediablocks failing BECAUSE of a big update, after a while they were updated, is laughable. I do not question that that actually happened but it is SOFTWARE we are talking about: those are not people with feelings! Media Blocks don't commit suicide because they are not receiving periodic updates!)