Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Rack wiring

This is topic Rack wiring in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-23-2003, 09:49 PM:

I saw this in another thread and thought some of the members may have missed this pic. Has anyone EVER seen anything this bad before? I mean I've seen some pretty bad racks, some by people who could come in as a close second, but THIS ONE???

Paul, I feel for you the day comes you have to service Spiderman's web. [Eek!]

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 01-23-2003, 09:53 PM:

Hell,Brad....I already am! [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-23-2003, 09:56 PM:

I think you should nuke the side from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. [Wink]

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-23-2003, 10:22 PM:

There was one place I remember that the sound rack wiring was all intertwined with all of the stage light wiring. They couldn't figure out why the sound system buzzed whenever they did so much as breath on the lighting board.

I've also seen a few 'last minute' live theatre setups that looked something like Paul's bundle of fun. Glad I only had to mix for those ones and never had to pack up.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 01-23-2003, 10:30 PM:

I have to admit I get a little angry when I find out than a shield of a hunk of audio cable (not used as an audio cable) is tied to 115VAC! I don't like those 60HZ beebee shots going through my fingers... [Mad]

There are times I ask myself why I am so stupid to service some of these nightmares....but at least it keeps me off the streets and out of the bars.

Brad, I showed that picture to my boss at the radio station. He laughed his ass off. [Smile]

But all in all, I have to do lots of wiring updates and clean it up. Nobody in their right mind would want to work on stuff like this. I guess I am nuts after all for even tackling this project I have to contend with. For the last 5 years, I tried to avoid it like the plague....but now that it has died, I have no choice.

I have to point out like I did in the orginal thread that this is not my setup. Mine has a little less wiring, but looks 10 times worse. At least in the picture of whoever did it, it looks like it has a _little_ organization....mine does not have any at all! That makes it worse!

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-23-2003, 10:38 PM:

I still like the sign the best. It kind of reads: 'You unplug one wire, we ain't got a chance in hell in figurin' out where it goes!'

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 01-23-2003, 10:42 PM:

And, Daryl, that is the feeling I have when one falls off a terminal.

Edit: Nothing like spending 6 hours trying to figure out where the wire goes on a home made box with 14 relays that got caught in a tornado with no schematic documentation of even what the hell is in it and why.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 01-23-2003, 10:52 PM:

That can't be real! What IS it? There's no excuse for something like that.

Although, I would enjoy the challenge of rewiring it, and making it neat. For the sake of keeping my sanity, if anything.

Posted by Jon Bartow (Member # 241) on 01-23-2003, 10:54 PM:

Something I said in another thread

quote:
Paul's comment about electronic things that should never happen reminded me of something that happened to me years ago:

It was a church sound system using a self-contained 6-channel mixer/100w amp combo with all of the mic and speaker lines permanent in the walls. Somewhere along the line someone had spliced into the right speaker channel line and put another speaker in the nursery. (don't get me started about changing the ohm load etc, that was the least of their problems) Well, they used 24awg thermostat wire for this add-on speaker... Someone later on (presumably an HVAC guy) took a bunch of thermostat wires from the old heating system that were all under the stage and spliced them all together. (it was ugly, I think I counted 10 different pairs. Why he was splicing them together ) And you guessed it, the add-on speaker wire was spliced into this rats nest.
The end result: No sound in the nursery unless the heat was set at 62deg or higher and no heat unless the master fader was set to at least -15dB. Go figure. Needless to say this one took me quite a while to figure out.
Jonathan

We've all seen the really bad installs, but good grief Paul, this one takes the cake

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 01-24-2003, 02:07 AM:

I have had the unfortunate task of having to service racks that look very similar to that one. Usually I start by removing all the wiring and rewiring the whole damn thing. [Smile]

-Aaron

Posted by John Anastasio (Member # 607) on 01-24-2003, 06:31 AM:

[dlp]

I rebuilt a small cable TV installation that looked exactly like that picture a few years ago. Hmm...for some strange reason they couldn't get rid of the hum bars on all their video. Every time they had changed out or added a new piece of equipment, the cables had simply been hung in the breeze and left loose so that they could trace them by hand instead of labelling them. There were no cabling diagrams. Some things were grounded, some were not. Some runs were terminated, some were unterminated. Video Levels were all over the place becasue they weren't even using a waveform monitor. Then some brilliant technician decided to clean it up by bundling things together just to get stuff off the floor, which only made it worse, since you couldn't even yank on a cable to see what moved. I just trashed the whole thing. It took me 1,000 feet of new cable and a case of connectors to get four racks cleaned up.

Posted by William T. Parr (Member # 677) on 01-24-2003, 08:04 AM:

Tim,
Unfortunatley is can be real. As one who works for the State maintaning some of thier IDF and MDF closets I have run across some that bear a resemblence to that picture. All that do are in LAB situations though where cables are constaly being moved areound between Token Ring and variously configured switches routers and hub's. Neatness is the last thing in those guy's mind. Sad but True. [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 01-24-2003, 09:03 AM:

That looks like the old data closet at a company I used to work for! I'm going to have nightmares tonight. Thanks Brad!

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-24-2003, 12:03 PM:

Just so you don't have nightmares, here's something better to dream of. I like to wire stuff nice and neat.

10/100 Cisco Managed Switches with Gigabit Fibre

Drop Patches to Switches with Plexiglass shield to prevent 'intruders' from seeking revenge by ripping out all the wiring.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-24-2003, 12:50 PM:

William: Token Ring????

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 01-24-2003, 01:26 PM:

Here is a small rack

Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 01-24-2003, 02:18 PM:

Here is a couple of pics from a wireing closet that we recently completed for British Telecom

Before:

After:

Posted by Sam Hunter (Member # 1119) on 01-24-2003, 07:03 PM:

Here is some shots of a terminal installation I am finishing.

Cool stuff Jason [thumbsup]

[ 01-26-2003, 08:31 PM: Message edited by: Sam Hunter ]

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 01-25-2003, 12:15 AM:

Sam, where does the Carnivore machine plug in to monitor my email?

Posted by William T. Parr (Member # 677) on 01-25-2003, 12:28 AM:

Scott,

Yes believe it or not the State of Texas has stuff here at the DHS that is still on Token Ring. Not much but enough for me to have to keep a supply of Token Ring Network cards handy and parts for Token Ring concentrators. If things go as planned this stuff should all be gone by the end of this year.

Posted by Mike Williams (Member # 1140) on 01-26-2003, 07:48 AM:

That wiring picture that Daryl posted brings up a question I have always wondered. Why do people mount electrical outlets upside down (with the ground prong on top)? I never could figure that out. My apartment is wired that way too. Is there some kind of new electical code that requires this everywhere? I hate it. If I have one of those plug/transformer combos it usually will fall out of the outlet because of this. How is this better?

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-26-2003, 08:20 AM:

I didn't install them upside down... the top row (of the 4 sockets per unit) is upside down, the bottom row is right side up. Those units contain built in surge protectors. [Smile]

Posted by Richard Hamilton (Member # 321) on 01-26-2003, 09:16 AM:

Mike,
I believe that it is code in some places to mount receptacles upside down. This way, if a plug isn't pushed all the way in, the ground pin is exposed instead of the 120v prong. It's a safety issue.

Rick

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 01-26-2003, 10:50 AM:

Argh...too much paranoid thinking these days. Like putting polarized pins on a device where polarity could not possibly matter like an AC adaptor.

Posted by Demetris Thoupis (Member # 833) on 01-26-2003, 02:25 PM:

Hey. Why don't people just post photos from their rack installations up so we can enjoy some good rack wiring since everyone here DOES care about film presentation? Gordon. Your racks are great. I've also seen one or two in some other topics which I don't exactly recall right now

Posted by Jean-Michel Grin (Member # 1360) on 01-26-2003, 05:33 PM:

For me it was a dilema do modify some "old" audio racks without remove all amps and amplifiers. But one year ago I din't have more patience to loose my time: I removed all the amps and processors ant the dirty stuff that bring me buzz, hums and ground loop. For example anytime the xenon lamp was ignited, all the horible buzz passed trought the speakers ! (it was a lot of relays and unbalanced audio wiring) For luck we replace the processors by CP650, a new MS-100 for monitoring and news audio cables . A great source of inspiration was the reading of Rane technical note. A great reference for any people who take care of good audio wiring [Smile]

http://www.rane.com/note110.html

Bye,

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 01-26-2003, 05:42 PM:

A friend of mine was telling me he did some work at the Chicago Board of Trade, which has tons of equipment similar to what's used at the NYC stock market. In the basement, there are hallways which are used to route cables around the building. These hallways are about 12ft high. However, over the decades (as new technologies became available) new cables were laid under the old cables to connect the newer equipment. Now, the hallways have only 7-8 feet to walk under, because the ceiling is a solid 5 feet of cable. Apparently, the possibility of disrupting trades far outweighs any worth of reclaiming the copper (if there are any equipment outages, the traders practically riot because they are losing commissions.) So any new cables are placed while the building is closed at night, and things absolutely must be in place and ready the next day.

The light fixtures have been extended several times to keep lowering them below the mass of cables.