Lucky escape installing an IMS3000 in a NC3240

[Leo Enticknap]

Thought I'd mention this as a heads up in case this catches (literally!) anyone else. As I inserted the IMS into the bottom option slot, one of the chassis rails caught the cable coming from the tamper switch mounted front right of the card cage, and pulled the connector out. The first I knew about this was an error 178 (marriage tamper) that prevented me from entering the marriage username and password. It had also grazed one of the wires, but thankfully had not broken it. I was able to reseat the IMS without disconnecting the tamper switch by holding the cable out of the way with the end of a small screwdriver as I inserted the IMS into the card cage rails.

Thought this was worth flagging up so that no-one else accidentally severs a wire or damages the connector on the tamper switch board. Removing the card cage to replace it is a serious PITA.

This likely won't be an issue if you use the middle option slot, but I couldn't because the one in this projector was already in use by a quad HD-SDI card.

[Jim Cassedy]

Oh, the humanity.....

[Leo Enticknap]

Admittedly, if I'd torn that tamper switch cable, doing so would not have caused 36 deaths, put a further 41 in the hospital, minor injuries to 11 more, the total loss of a $613m (adjusted for inflation) asset, the loss of several thousand jobs, and the complete abandonment of a technology that had been in development and use for four decades. About three hours of work and a $100 part, plus the lost revenue from down time awaiting the arrival of that part, would have been trivial in comparison, but still something I'd be keen to avoid!

[Randy Stankey]

Disruption of mission critical equipment is one of my biggest sources of apprehension.

It's one thing to have a projector off-line before showtime but it's a whole different ball of wax if it goes down during a show.

I was once in the booth during a show that went down and caused a riot to break out!

It was just a film break. It only took five minutes to fix.

The movie was "Set it Off."
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117603/

The crowd was already rowdy before they even came in. Most of them had been smoking the devil's lettuce. Given the theme of the movie, they were ready for trouble before the show even started. Again, it should have been a five minute fix... until the fit hit the shan.

First, they started clapping, stomping and yelling, "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! We want the show!" The next thing you know, somebody shouted the N-word and all hell broke loose. We called the cops and two paddy wagons showed up. It probably took them a half hour to clear the house.

That auditorium was out of commission for the rest of the night while we cleaned it up and fixed broken seats and stuff.
One of the ushers found a bag of weed under one of the seats. I told him to flush it down the toilet because you never know what could be mixed with it! Whether he actually did or not, I never asked.

It's really bad design, IMO, to have a little, horseshoe shaped cable that can be pulled out of its socket simply by sliding a circuit board out of its slot. Although it probably would not have caused a show-stopper but it's still a simple thing that could cause big problems.

It's patently unfair to say, "Only qualified service technicians" should access that part of the projector. It's just a cop-out and an excuse for laziness on the part of the people who approved such a faulty design.

I don't know who spliced-up the move on the night of that riot. It could have been me. I don't remember but that's not the point.

Putting such an easily broken cable inside a projector is like me making a bad splice then saying, "The operator who started the projector should have checked all the splices first!"

Maybe it isn't like the Hindenburg but it's still no reason for not doing things as well as you know how without making excuses.

[Leo Enticknap]

The title of that movie was somewhat prophetic! And without wanting to come across as too judgmentally stereotypical, it does sounds like the sort of film that would attract that sort of audience.

It's patently unfair to say, "Only qualified service technicians" should access that part of the projector. It's just a cop-out and an excuse for laziness on the part of the people who approved such a faulty design.

It even tripped up a qualified service technician!

NEC tamper switches are notorious for going bad, and unlike their Barco counterparts, many of them require hours of disassembly and reassembly to replace. A Dolby tech once told me that bad tamper switches was one of the more common causes of calls for help they receive from customers who call reporting that an IMS2000 or 3000 in an NEC projector has stopped working.

[Steve Guttag]

From a service standpoint, there seems to be a country of origin ideology at play. I've found, over the years, that asian based equipment has never really thought it was of any consequence that one has to "dig into" a piece of equipment to get to the part you are after. It isn't just NEC and it isn't just cinema. If you work on cassette decks of yesteryear or if you are working on Elmo or Eiki 16mm projectors. Digging in is just part of what you may have to do. The other part of that ideology seems to be to use unfinished sheetmetal everywhere. It is not uncommon to come away with cuts/gashes from the metal parts that are left sharp after stamping. And then combine that with fasteners (screws) that seem just a little too small for the job that is being asked. At least, that is what my half-century of experience has shown.

As for switches going bad...blame the absurdity of RoHS...not that RoHS is absurd but to the extremes and for its lack of consideration for the impact at the removal of valid uses of heavy metals. Switches (and relays) fall victim to the omission of Cadmium. Back in the electro-mechanical world, Cadmium was a staple element for most things that have contacts as it cuts down on oxidation. I'm amazed that Christie went for electromechanical switches for airflow or even the door switches...particularly since their airflow switches are designed for much higher currents. They have bitten us more than NEC. Barco uses low-current switches on their covers and even those have had issues (not just cover switches but also lens position switches).

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I had something similar to this happen putting an SX3000 into an NC-2000 once. Luckily I always go very easy and caught what was happenning before it got bad. So yes, one just really needs to be very careful when installing any module in to a projector.

[Leo Enticknap]

Kinda agreed on the Asian design philosophy, but I can't say that I agree when it comes to Eiki 16mm portables: I found them very modular and easy to extract and replace parts on. I once bought an RT-3 for next to nothing on Ebay, that had originally been issed to a school by its local education authority, just as VHS was superseding 16mm for educational use. It had never been removed from its original box, and had sat in it for around 30 years, untouched. When I got it, the only problems I found were that the natural rubber belts for the reel arms and main drive were rotten and crumbling, and that the OEM molybendum grease in the camtank had almost completely solidified. Replacing the belts and extracting the camtank to work on was a very quick and easy process. Scraping every last trace of that spectacularly nasty smelling grease out of the camtank before refilling it with synthetic was anything but, however.

The Asian design philosophy appears to be that if it's a limited life part that is intended to be replaced during the service life of the equipment, it's quick and easy to get at. But if it's designed to last the life of the equipment, the exact opposite applies, hence the complexity of removing a card cage from a Series 2 NEC. I've noticed this working on Honda cars, too: the oil filter, air filters, and other consumable components are quick and easy to swap out. But (for example) replacing a gunked up PCV valve on my wife's 2012 Civic was a five-hour nightmare.

[Steve Guttag]

There can be "blessed" items that get special consideration for service but, by and large, I've found that I've always had to dig into such equipment. Take the NC900C lamp ballasts (please!)...they chose to stack them on PCB standoffs...except one corner and if you need to change the lower one, well you have to "dig in" and remove the upper one first. Conversely, a well designed system would have had them on card slides with enough cable to allow for for the lower one to be slid out.

Compare that to a Barco where as much as possible is put on the outside of the projector such that most parts are a fast swap. Nobody's perfect but the time it takes to tear down a typical NEC versus a typical Barco is night and day and the disparity is actually getting greater. The NC3541L/NC2041L versus an SP4K is dramatically different in service philosophies. I recently had to swap a light engine (prism in NEC speak) on an SP4K (stuck pixel...thanks TI)...it was almost a pleasure to do it on an SP4K. The NC1200/2000 prism swaps aren't bad except you also have to swap the cage and plumbing and wiring with it...which takes more time than the actual removal/install of the prism assembly. Then again, with NEC, you can get most everything down to the part and not be forced into expensive assemblies.

As for Elmo and Eiki...I'll admit, I worked on many more Elmos than Eiki (both 16mm and slide projectors). I wouldn't call it hard but you did have to "dig in." If that nylon gear popped (happens all of the time on the LX1100/2200) you might be removing a bunch of stuff first (depends on the gear). On the portables...there is greater likelihood that stuff is in your way. Belt changes were not normally that big a deal, however. I got reasonably decent at gate alignments too.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Kinda agreed on the Asian design philosophy, but I can't say that I agree when it comes to Eiki 16mm portables: I found them very modular and easy to extract and replace parts on. I once bought an RT-3 for next to nothing on Ebay, that had originally been issed to a school by its local education authority, just as VHS was superseding 16mm for educational use. It had never been removed from its original box, and had sat in it for around 30 years, untouched. When I got it, the only problems I found were that the natural rubber belts for the reel arms and main drive were rotten and crumbling, and that the OEM molybendum grease in the camtank had almost completely solidified. Replacing the belts and extracting the camtank to work on was a very quick and easy process. Scraping every last trace of that spectacularly nasty smelling grease out of the camtank before refilling it with synthetic was anything but, however.

The Asian design philosophy appears to be that if it's a limited life part that is intended to be replaced during the service life of the equipment, it's quick and easy to get at. But if it's designed to last the life of the equipment, the exact opposite applies, hence the complexity of removing a card cage from a Series 2 NEC. I've noticed this working on Honda cars, too: the oil filter, air filters, and other consumable components are quick and easy to swap out. But (for example) replacing a gunked up PCV valve on my wife's 2012 Civic was a five-hour nightmare.

Yes, the Eiki's are by far the most serviceable 16mm projectors out there. A long time ago I worked as the AV Repair guy for a school district in the west suburbs of Chicago that had over 800 16mm projectors in it's district, and it's own film library with close to 3000 16mm prints. We also had a lot of Kodak Pagents and a few B&H thrown in. I'd say the Kodak's were more reliable then the Eiki's and almost as easy to repair. When a B&H went bad because of the cracked nylon gear, I binned them and bought a new Eiki to replace it... I could fix five Eiki cam tanks in the time it took to repair one B&H..

[Leo Enticknap]

Yeah - during my days in England there was a group of experimental filmmakers in town who had a 1970s vintage Hell & Bowell with the infamous worm gear transmission, that of course eventually cracked. They absolutely wanted it fixed, because they liked the ability to flip between 18 and 24 FPS at the touch of a button, and believed that the picture was less flickery at the lower frame rate than on an Eiki after you've moved the belt between grooves on the motor pulley.

I found a guy on Ebay who sold new worm gears, and managed to replace it for them: but it was a day-long job that almost left me with PTSD!

I donated the RT-3 to that group just before I emigrated. The cost of shipping my stuff was already getting horrific, without adding another 80-90lb, and then there would have been the hassle of trying to find a 120v power supply for it (the power supply modules in those things are totally separate for 240v/50 and 120v/60 territories). I've a feeling that when the new worm I put in (in around 2009-10) disintegrates, it will see significant use!