Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Here's how a booth should be wired!?

This is topic Here's how a booth should be wired!? in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 05-06-2003, 10:34 PM:

Since the rack wiring that most members here buy/make/install is generally pretty impressive, I thought you'd appreciate the obvious humour in the following:

A group of drive-in owners ran into this during a tour earlier this year. It's the front view of the rack, located against the back wall, right behind the projector... fairly accessible.

Note the OSHA-approved disclaimer [Razz]

Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 05-06-2003, 11:00 PM:

Boy, I'll say it's dangerous----just look at that ungrounded brown extension cord. [Wink]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-06-2003, 11:10 PM:

It's no wonder the "UL Listed" logo is missing from that!

Posted by Don Sneed (Member # 955) on 05-07-2003, 12:10 AM:

Whoooooaaa.....at least they put a warning label on it..I seen a few old booths like that, booth with sound systems from the 40's with RCA amplifier & pre-amp....I once service a booth with a sound system from the early 30's & still was working, the speakers had no magnet, a 90vdc electric field transformer mounted on the wall behind the screen ....I can relate to the picture !!! [thumbsup]

Posted by Mark Maxwell (Member # 1355) on 05-07-2003, 12:37 AM:

Too hell with the extension cord. As dangerous as that can be, look up and over a couple of inches from it. Three cut wires, not capped, and pretty damn close togeather. Seeing that for the first time in a new booth, an operator might ask, "Are those wires hot, and if so, where are they coming from and going to? And why does this sound rack look almost as bad as the dashboard of a 72 Pinto that's been stripped?"

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-07-2003, 02:01 AM:

Reminds me of an ex-girlfriend when I was a student who asked me to investigate a power failure and 'weird smell' in her shared student house. I found that a 20-amp neutral cable going from the main fuse box into what appeared to be the lighting circuit had literally burnt through (insulation melted, multicore cable inside black and generally buggered)!

Looking around the house for what could have caused this, I found what had happened was that someone, at some stage, had taken a spur off the lighting circuit to provide an extra mains socket in one of the bedrooms. Into this socket, I discovered, one of Rosalind's flatmates had plugged a 5kw electric fire.

So why hadn't the main fuse for that circuit just blown, you ask yourself? It clearly had, several times in the past. When I looked in the fuse box, the ceramic cartridge holding the 5 amp fuse wire between the two contacts was missing from that slot. In its place, and neatly soldered across the two contacts, was a three-inch nail! [evil]

The wire which had burnt was cable-clipped to wood panelling just below the fuse box, which was charred and blackened in the area where the wire was damaged. I'd say those students were extremely lucky not to have set the house on fire. When the landlord's electricians eventually came round to sort this mess out, they discovered that some previous tenants had reverse-phased the entire power supply in an attempt to disable the coin-operated electricity meter!

Posted by Peter Hall (Member # 695) on 05-07-2003, 11:14 AM:

I didn't know that our compeditors in the UK did work in the USA !

Posted by Bob Koch (Member # 1062) on 05-07-2003, 01:00 PM:

What a hell of a way for a decent RCA 140 rack to end up.

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 05-07-2003, 04:17 PM:

I was there when Jack's daughter took the picture. If you think the front looks bad... you should've seen the back!

For the record.... NOT all drive-in's are wired that way.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 05-07-2003, 07:59 PM:

Boy that is almost as neat of rack wireing as one of the of the racks I saw here on filmtech some time ago

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 05-09-2003, 12:20 AM:

What's that thing on the floor? They run out of rack space?

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 05-09-2003, 09:17 AM:

That looks to me like a smart exictor powersupply

Posted by John T. Moon II (Member # 1694) on 05-09-2003, 09:27 PM:

I think the only thing smart would be to stay away from that power supply.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-10-2003, 02:27 AM:

Ok, I'll coin a few phrases here too....
There's got to be rats in that nest somewhere!! Who ever built that rack should be expelled from the world of wire and cable!!
Who backordered the tie wraps!! Crap, forgot my tools and still have to assemble the rack for the 1pm show!! Crap again, I'll have to naw the insulation off the wire with just my teeth [Embarrassed]

!! Jimmys's 4th grade class had a science fair last Wednesday and the runner up was....!! The person that wired this rack wasn't too Smart, were they??? Yesterday I couldn't spell Engeaneer but now I are one!! The hanging occured at rack space 5.5 as the enginneer wasn't able to amputate his own arm free from the bundle before circulation cutoff occured!!
Hope I wasn't too brutal...
Mark

Posted by Pete Naples (Member # 761) on 05-10-2003, 05:10 AM:

Gordon, is that an NCS/CCS rack? Loks very much like some installed for them. Really bad things to wire, nothing internally to support the cables.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 05-10-2003, 08:07 AM:

Don't know who was responsiable for that mess I just saw the picture in the picture page and said "oh my...." and proceeded to [puke]

I think there is a special place in hell where that person will be sent to that will consit of making harnesses with lacing tape [evil]

Posted by David Graham Rose (Member # 1450) on 05-12-2003, 01:26 PM:

I didn't realise that Peter had any competitors in the UK [Confused]

Posted by Peter Hall (Member # 695) on 05-14-2003, 11:56 AM:

David -

Nobody quite "competes" with us doing quite what we do !

Posted by Sam Hunter (Member # 1119) on 05-14-2003, 10:20 PM:

How bout this?

I wonder who did that? [Wink]