Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: DTS XD10 PROBLEM

This is topic DTS XD10 PROBLEM in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by David J Hilsgen (Member # 2614) on 04-01-2016, 11:25 PM:

In my pile of players i got a few that boot up with this, LOADER U 1.04 [444A] INITIALIZING What do i have to do to fix?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-01-2016, 11:34 PM:

System image corrupted or HDD failed?

If it were me, I'd replace the HDD on spec with a new one (if you can still find an IDE new one; you may need to use a SATA to IDE converter if not), that is totally blank, i.e. the partition table just rewritten. Then boot the latest version of the software CD and let it repartition the HDD and rewrite the system image.

The only problem is if you have show audio ingested that you don't want to lose and don't have the discs for. But if your hard drive has gone bad, you're going to have that problem no matter what.

Edit / Afterthought: if you connect a monitor to the VGA output on the back of the unit, this will give you more information as to where in the boot sequence it's hanging: whether still at the BIOS initialization stage, or after it's started reading program code from the hard drive. Bad CMOS batteries can cause a hang at the BIOS initialization stage.

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 04-02-2016, 12:17 AM:

I second Leo on putting a monitor on it and see if you get video. Take the cover off and listen for the beep at the end of the POST. If you are getting a series of beeps it is likely bad RAM or Motherboard. Could be cap rot.

Posted by David J Hilsgen (Member # 2614) on 04-02-2016, 01:33 PM:

Thank guys for the info, any particular brand of hard drive it likes better.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-02-2016, 03:24 PM:

Not that I'm aware of. When I replaced one that did the click of death about a year ago, I just bought a "new, old stock" 160GB IDE enterprise grade one on Ebay, installed it, booted from a final version software CD (2.something, if I remember correctly), and it reinitialized and rewrote the software quite happily. I can't remember what brand of drive it was. There then followed some fun-packed hours of reingesting all the audio from a stack of CDs and DVDs, but it's worked happily ever since.

If it's not the hard drive, I second Stephan for checking out capacitor plague: I'm told that this did affect quite a lot of XD-10s. You should be able to see if you have that problem when opening the case: bad caps look like this:

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-02-2016, 04:49 PM:

Bad capacitors on the mommy boards are I'm afraid are quite more common than failed hard drives are. I can't even tell you how many XD-10 MB's I re-capped over the years. Well over 50 though.

I wrote up Re-capping XD-10 Motherboards some years ago...

Mark

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 04-04-2016, 06:16 AM:

Because we started stocking them, I changed a set of XD10s over to the popular 1TB Hitachi (HGST now) Enterprise grade drives and used the SATA to IDE adapter boards. Zero problems. The site has four XD10s and all are networked so all of them are a backup for the others.

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 04-04-2016, 11:49 AM:

Considering they used consumer hardware, it should be possible to find a proper replacement for the hardware.

Is there anybody who want to sell one or two broken devices?

The pata - sata convertors are cheap on ebay. The network options sounds great (in combination with a VPN that should be very nice for home use with friends)

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-05-2016, 10:35 AM:

Steve,

I don't think the version of Linux DTS used will see the full 1tb drive. I believe the maximum seen is either 320 GB or 500 GB.... There was a discussion of maximum drive size when I went to DTS for training on them.

Mark

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 04-05-2016, 02:20 PM:

Actually, with the last version of software (2.2.06), you get about 800GB of film soundtrack storage (effectively every sound track they ever played with plenty of extra storage). You can also set the allocation of the storage to give film sound more space. From the factory, they allow quite a bit of space for video (these were to be preshow servers at one point too.) By adjusting that you can get about 800GB on a 1TB drive.

Again, I used them because I had a large quantity and had them for a VERY good price. This isn't theory...it is a done deal...several times over.

They just ran Hateful Eight for a couple of months without a hitch too.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-05-2016, 04:10 PM:

That's good to know, and who is going to go out hunting down 500GB HD's anyway. I honestly only ever had two or three HD's fail in them out of over a hundred units. But all the Mother Boards failed!

We also got all the CP-650's that had capacitor plague capacitors in the power supply.... every single one of those died too...

Mark

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 09-28-2016, 03:33 AM:

Considering a lot of motherboards fail in the XD10, is there a possibility to use a alternative mainboard?

In the later models I see the usage of the P5P-800 VM , anybody has experience with a swap and what is possible (and what is not)

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-28-2016, 09:47 AM:

No! The bios is special just for the XD-10. The boards are very easy to re-cap, you just need the proper tools. There are also places that you can send the MB to that will repair them for you if you don't have the expertise.

Mark

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 09-28-2016, 11:05 AM:

Hi Mark,

Any idea what's special and where the differences are? I can hardly believe they did so much special in the BIOS of the mainboards. It's consumer hardware and they switched brand/chipset/cpu on later models.

Thanks for your help

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-28-2016, 11:43 AM:

DTS 6 and 6D also used common MB's but had a special bios.
I have seen both XD-10 MB's for sale on Ebay. But you have to realize that its likely you will have the same capacitor plague issue with those MB's too. Fixing the existing MB will permanently fix the issue at hand. The Version 1 MB was more prone to capacitor plague failure than the version 2, but version 2 caps still also fail. And the two versions are not directly interchangeable with each other because of differences in the chassis. I was one of the few that was lucky enough to get training on XD-10's right at the factory. You can convert a version 1 unit to a version 2 but there is different sheet metal and power supply changes to be done. It cost USD 1200 to have DTS change to the newer V-2 MB.

Mark

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 09-28-2016, 01:07 PM:

The mainbord "died" when upgrade of the capacitors is done. So looking for a drop in, thats why i whas wondering which options are there. Which are the two boards that are used?

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-28-2016, 03:08 PM:

If you can find one on Ebay then just move the chip that contains the bias over. It was socketed on the V-1 boards. Not sure about V-2 board because I ran into just a few of those. Custom Bios is pretty common. Both Dolbly and GDC also use off the shelf motherboards made by Super Micro, almost identical boards in fact. But both contain custom bias because they have to do certain things right on boot up.

Mark

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 09-28-2016, 04:34 PM:

uhm... I seriously doubt that DTS developed a special version of the BIOS. Maybe they had a BIOS with their settings in it - so they just had to upload it on the motherboard without having to tweak all the settings.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-29-2016, 01:02 PM:

Well, you can doubt it all you want to but thats what we were told at training.

Mark

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 09-29-2016, 05:57 PM:

An XD-10 specific profile of BIOS settings as distinct from actual bespoke BIOS program code seems more likely. After all, the BIOS controls the motherboard, and the motherboard itself is no different in an XD-10 than the same model in use for other applications. There is bespoke hardware connected to it (e.g. the front panel LED display and buttons), but that would be driven by hardware drivers loaded with the operating system, presumably.

The next time I get a moment, I'll hook up a monitor and keyboard to ours and see what the BIOS settings screen looks like. That should provide a clue.

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 10-08-2016, 05:07 AM:

I've bought another unit of ebay. Off course I have now two different mainboards.. Does the newer P5 asus board also suffer from bad capacitors?

The newer unit is way noisier than the old unit (p3 compared to the hot p4)