DCP-2K4, Blackmagic 6GHDI converter, and static.

[Pete Naples]

RTC and SM are not connected.

[Devin McNamara]

I’ll say one thing. If I can’t get it to play any video. It would certainly be a funny music player as the audio comes through perfectly.?

[Devin McNamara]

Is it possible to reinstall/possibly downgrade the software? Similar to reinstalling windows on a standard PC? My current version is 2.8.16. Is this version pre-DCI? What version are you guys that are capable of playing these at home running? If it is possible would it be worth reinstalling/downgrading to see if there is a problem with the version I am running? I’m assuming I could just install it to any standard usb drive and simply plug that into the USB port on the board? At least then I wouldn’t blow my current boot drive.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

RTC and SM are not connected.

Also, the chassis serial number is not configured and the Dolphin RTC is lost. (Edit: Pete already mentioned the RTC)

I think those are the two hot items, resolve those and it should function properly for non encryoted content.

Devin: The serial number issue is because you swapped critical parts between the two servers. If possible, try to force the current server serial number to match the donor servers SN. Replace the Dolphin battery and connect to a proper network to restore the RTC.

I think that fixing those will get things settled down enough for your application.

[Devin McNamara]

Ok so I fixed the chassis serial number problem but how does connecting it to my network make it fix the RTC? I thought that once the Dolphin’s RTC was lost, only Doremi could resync it. But if it’s possible what do I have to do once I get it on the network?

[Pete Naples]

Ok so I fixed the chassis serial number problem but how does connecting it to my network make it fix the RTC? I thought that once the Dolphin’s RTC was lost, only Doremi could resync it. But if it’s possible what do I have to do once I get it on the network?

That's my understaning too, when RTC is lost, the cert is also lost. Only Dolby/Doremi could re-serial the Dolphin card, they no longer offer that service.

[Dave Macaulay]

The chassis number (in a new file /etc/chassis) reported in diag tool was added in a pretty old software update. This file has to be created in older servers without it, a text file with just the number like DC3xxxxx. It has zero effect on operation if it's missing. I think it's just to track the server serial (for warranty?) as the IMB serial has no relation to the chassis number - and Dolphin boards do get swapped, replaced, and reserialized. DCP servers came new with the eSN matching the chassis number.

[Devin McNamara]

Well phooey. I guess this means that the 1.0 dolphin is toast. I have another dolphin card, the problem is it has the DCI compliant firmware on it so I assume this is going to prevent me from playing my nonencrypted content through it? And from what I read it is impossible to downgrade to the non-DCI firmware. I may have hit an impasse.

[Carsten Kurz]

Dolphin 1.0 will continue to work with lost RTC, Dolphin 1.2 will not.

What I consider critical is the decoding errors in the log you mention.

[Devin McNamara]

Are these errors something that can be fixed or is this the product of something inside the card going bad? I’ve tried multiple DCPs and the results are the same so I don’t believe content corruption is causing them.

[Pete Naples]

Remove the dolphin, clean the connectors with Servisol/De-Oxit/ Reseat it a couple of times.

I'd do the same for the RAM & CPU.

It's worth looking at the state of the RAID, and the content (does it crash with all content?)

[Devin McNamara]

So I cleaned all the contacts on the dolphin, the ram and CPU. I ran the analysis on the raid and didn’t find anything wrong. The drives show as healthy and the raid is running at an average 180 MB/S. Are there other ways to check out the raid other than in the GUI? What’s the best way to check the content. There is a lot of it on here and I would be surprised if all of it is corrupted given that I’ve tried playin almost all of it.

[Devin McNamara]

Well the saga continues. I cleaned all the contacts to the point where they are nice and shiny on everything that hooks to the motherboard. Just for giggles I even tried the dolphin card in the next PCI slot. Nothing so far. The raid shows a healthy with a buffer speed of around 180 MB/s. I have various parts from two of these units and so far I can’t get anything to happen. The only thing I have not tried yet is switching the motherboard. I’m not really convinced that the board is bad though l. The dolphin card shows up and appears to be working as I can get a clean audio signal on all channels with any content that I play. Is there a better converter to try? Is it possible that I need to restore this to factory defaults? Is it possible to to reinstall the OS from scratch? It still sketches me out that when I ran the Cinelink 0 command in the terminal and it just resulted in making the file completely blank. I was able to FTP in grab the file, place a 0 in then save it. I was then able to place the file back in at both etc/0/cinelink and etc/cinelink. I pointed the built in text editor and can confirm that it worked as I can see the 0 that I put in. I don’t think the dolphin card is bad unless both of them are. But I get the exact same result with either one right from booting up.

[Devin McNamara]

Well ladies and gentlemen I got a response back from Dolby about my situation. It looks as if my situation won’t be resolvable. It appears that link encryption can only be disabled by reserializing the card. Since they are no longer supported it looks as if it won’t be possible. Here is the text from the email.

Hi Devin,

Unfortunately those cards can only have their link encryption turned off in factory by re-serializing the media block. Thus, this task cannot be performed int he field and the static you're getting is from the encryption still enabled.

I'm sorry to say there's not much we can do at this point since the product is end of life and we no longer disable the encryption on these media blocks.

I’m glad that I at least got a response. I didn’t figure I would have gotten that far. Anyway thank you guys for all the help. I guess I’ll set the unit aside and scrap it for parts.

Is there any other type of player that has all the same features as this unit does that will let me control my automation system and make use of my JSD80's 8 channel digital input?

[Devin McNamara]

Is there a specific HDSDI converter that I should be looking for? I believe that the converter I have is not the proper one. I’ve been looking at the BlackMagic design HDLink converters that will take in both HDSDI signals. Is there a preferred or confirmed one that some members on here seem to have better luck with?