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Topic: Several questions regarding DTS XD10

Stephan Shelley
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 854
From: castro valley, CA, usa
Registered: Nov 2014

posted 03-04-2015 04:08 PM

I installed some early XD-10s way back when. There was an upgrade that reformatted the hard drive. It wants you to insert a thumb drive for it to save settings ans licenses. Later on it wants you to insert the thumb drive to restore settings and licenses. I suspect that is what you are seeing. It was looking for the thumb drive to save stuff on.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 03-04-2015 08:20 PM

Steve - thanks. Useful to know in case ours starts to act up.

On Brad's point about being screwed if the hard drive fails during a DTS 70 show, you're equally screwed if there is a serious CD read error when playing a show using a 6D.

We have two 6Ds and a failsafe board in one of our theaters, and a solo XD-10 in the other. I did once have a sound dropout during Lawrence of Arabia on the 6Ds, I suspect because of a scratched disc in one player and the failsafe not switching over, for whatever reason. Since then I've always burnt two fresh sets of discs for every show, which is obviously a time-consuming exercise.

I'm not sure, statistically, what is the greater risk - a CD read error playing from a 6D or a hard drive failure on an XD-10 or 20, but suspect that as long as the hard drive is replaced at regular intervals (I would be inclined to go for every five years, which is how long a consumer grade HDD is typically designed to last, assuming average use), the risk of failure is negligible. DTS must have thought that the risk of failure was very low, because if they'd judged it to be significant, surely they'd have designed it with a RAID 1 rather than a single hard drive?

I also like the XD-10's display telling you how long is left on a reel, because I can get ready for the changeover with only a minute or so to go and not have to be standing around for 2-3 minutes waiting for it.

Of course what would be the perfect solution is a modification to the XD-10/20, such that it has enough RAM on the motherboard to hold the complete show in memory (4GB should be enough, even for a three-hour 70mm epic), meaning that it wouldn't have to read from the hard drive at all during an actual screening. Assuming that the motherboard is capable of holding that much RAM, achieving this should be a relatively simple software patch, I'd guess.

Alternatively, I may just put a SSD in ours when the time comes for the next drive replacement.

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 03-04-2015 08:41 PM

quote: Leo Enticknap
Since then I've always burnt two fresh sets of discs for every show, which is obviously a time-consuming exercise.

Surely you mean you burn a fresh set of discs for every engagement and not every performance, right??? (The discs won't get scratched sitting in the CD trays.)

quote: Leo Enticknap
I'm not sure, statistically, what is the greater risk - a CD read error playing from a 6D or a hard drive failure on an XD-10 or 20, but suspect that as long as the hard drive is replaced at regular intervals (I would be inclined to go for every five years, which is how long a consumer grade HDD is typically designed to last, assuming average use), the risk of failure is negligible.

I find it interesting that all of the XD10s I have are still on their original IDE hard drives. Not a single one has failed yet (but that doesn't stop me from installing them in a failsafe manner). Let's face it, the hard drives from several years ago are simply better built than the ones being made today. (For the record most consumer drives are now 3 years and some are down to 1 year warranty, whereas several years ago they were all 5 year warranties.)

quote: Leo Enticknap
DTS must have thought that the risk of failure was very low, because if they'd judged it to be significant, surely they'd have designed it with a RAID 1 rather than a single hard drive?

Well, GDC seems to have the same thought process, because every GDC server out there is running the operating system with one non-RAIDed hard drive...which is just fine and dandy until the day it isn't.

It should be noted that dts DID make RAID1 an option on the XD20, but very few went out the door configured for it because hey, cheaper is better!

That being said I was sad to hear when I tried to order some hard drive mounting brackets to upgrade some XD20s I had to a RAID1, datasat didn't have any left and wouldn't be making any more. HOWEVER I did arrive at a solution, and it's all about those thin Seagate drives.

Basically the bracket inside a XD20 is oversided for a normal 3.5" SATA drive, but it just so happens that two of the thin Seagate drives fit in there perfectly! (I had to put a strip of gaffer tape on each side, at which point it fit in there quite snugly and in no way would ever slide.) Then it was just a matter of adding another SATA cable to the motherboard and to use the extra power plug that was already there.

While I'm sure Steve Guttag will be along shortly to tell me how awful Seagate drives are, I'll take "awful Seagate drives" in a RAID1 configuration over an enterprise WD or whatever Steve prefers on its own anyday. [Wink]

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 03-05-2015 04:34 PM

Yes, I meant per engagement. The only DTS shows we do regularly are the usual 70mm favorites, I have ISOs for all the DTS 70mm titles (except The Master and The Bible: In the Beginning, which we haven't shown since I started here anyway) archived, and 10-20 minutes plus about $2-worth of blank CDs per engagement seems to me to be worth it to minimize the chance of a disc read error during the show.

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Fabian Schreyer
Film Handler

Posts: 63
From: Aachen, Germany
Registered: Feb 2009

posted 03-11-2015 08:25 PM

I guess this would be possible with an XD10 as well. My plan for the future is to install a PCI-SATA-RAID controller and remove one of the DVD drives. It should not be that big of a problem to get this configuration to work.

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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006

posted 03-11-2015 09:44 PM

quote: Steve Guttag
Note, they also needed new capacitors (they had started to flake out due to leaky caps)

I had a couple of XD-10 units crap-out on me within a few weeks of each
other about 3 or 4 yrs ago. I could clearly see the caps were ka-put.

As someone else pointed out, I'm pretty sure DTS got stuck with a bunch
of power supplies that were victims of "the great capacitor conundrum"
(or whatever it was).

I was able to get one of the systems up & running by pulling a power supply
out of an old computer in the booth. It wasn't an exact replacement, and it
required a rats-nest of clip-leads & jumper wires to get it to work, since
it wouldn't even fit into the XD-10 enclosure.

(I wish I'd taken a picture) but I got it working long enough until I was
able to find identical supplies at a computer warehouse store. About a
year later, another system died for the same reason.

But that one had been recently purchased refurbished from an an authorized
dealer, & was still under warranty, so they replaced the power supply free
of charge.

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