Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Christie 2210 - "Unable to communicate with ICP Board"

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 10-08-2015, 11:00 PM:

Exactly fifteen days ago I went to start my show and the projector turned the red error lights on and said "Unable to communicate with ICP Board". I was told that I had to replace the ICP board, which I did, and everything once again worked fine for the past week and a half. I lost four nights of shows (Wednesday through Saturday).

And everything works fine once again, for a week and a half.

Tonight I went to start my show and the projector turned the red error lights on and said "Unable to communicate with ICP Board".

*boggle*

I actually replaced the ICP board once before, not quite a year ago, as previously discussed here: http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/f16/t002109.html

So what the H-E-Double-hockey-sticks could be going on here? Am I just getting "lucky" with defective ICP boards?

One other interesting thing that I discovered tonight when I tried to run the Interrogator to gather log files to email to the tech. I can't run the Advanced Interrogator. When the Interrogator window comes up I can click on the Basic Interrogator and run that, and I can click on the Download to USB and that works, and I can click on the X that closes the Interrogator window. But clicking on, near, and anywhere around the Advanced Interrogator button gets absolutely no response.

I talked to the tech on the phone tonight and he's apparently going to pass the log files that I can get from the Basic Interrogator on to Christie in the morning and we'll see what develops from here.

The tech told me to try re-seating the ICP board so I did that, and now I can't re-marry it. "Unable to communicate with ICP Board" and the marriage light stays red.

My ghawd -- THREE defective ICP boards in the course of less than a year on a projector that plays only one show per night most of the time? Is that even possible?

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-09-2015, 03:31 AM:

Out of curiosity, do you have any other Christie series 2 projectors? If so...can you move the "defective" ICP to one of them and see if THEY can communicate with it?

If it were me, at this point, I'd back EVERYTHING up and reinstall the Christie firmware and do a COMPLETE reinstall of everything, particularly the TPC and PIB stuff too. 4.2.2 is definitely stable Christie (any previous 4.x isn't). 4.3.1 is out but less than a month and 4.3.0 was only available for 2-weeks or so before being yanked). Since you also have some sort of TPC issue...it may just be better to ensure whatever is bad in your system is pushed out or found out.

I've had 2 or 3 ICPs fail over our entire DLP line up (all three brands). One was nearly a DOA (voltages were never stable and would throw up errors), one failed on upgrade (it was an early series 2, circa 2010). While I've heard of ICPs being somewhat problematic earlier in life, we have not had a particular problem with them.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 10-09-2015, 01:47 PM:

quote: Frank Cox
My ghawd -- THREE defective ICP boards in the course of less than a year on a projector that plays only one show per night most of the time? Is that even possible?

Well, yes and no, I guess- -

A couple of years ago I worked at a screening room with an NEC NC2000C that
was a little over a year old and was used only a few hours a day several days
a week. (We were still running a lot of 35mm back then)

One day I turned it on and go the "ICP BOARD FAILURE" message.

Over the next 4 days, we went through two techs and 3 ICP board replacements,
and still had problems. It wasn't till, out of desperation, they started pulling
and swapping just about every part in the projector, that they found the cause.

Long story short- - they eventually discovered that there was a flaw in the
connector on one of the multi-conductor cables that connected to the ICP board.
There was an almost microscopic break in one of the conductors, right at the
point where the pin had been crimped on. (Actually, the insulation was crimped
fine, but there was a miniscule gap between the wire conductor and & plug pin.)

So, it apparently made contact well enuf for almost two years to work, but then,
perhaps by thermal cycling or whatever, the conductor finally pulled far enough
away from the pin that it stopped working. I don't know what particular function
that 'bad pin' had, but it showed up as a board failure, and not a COMM failure.

Even though the machine was out of warranty, either NEC or the seller didn't
charge for the fix since they acknowledged that it was a manufacturing error.
In fact, once they found the problem, they said were surprised that we hadn't
had problems sooner than when they finally started happening.

- - and we wound up with our original ICP board, which actually hadn't "Failed".

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-10-2015, 01:12 PM:

I've had so few failures among the 335 NEC's I installed that I can still count those failures on just one hand. Some projectors are now 6 years old too! I'll be moving to the second hand at the next repair though.

This does NOT count the power switch failures because none of those have ever taken a projector down for more than an hour.

Mark

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 10-10-2015, 01:31 PM:

Make sure to reseat the PIB board too as the communications go through it. The internal router is located on the PIB board. If the "bad" ICP checks out okay in another projector you may be looking at a bad back plane.

You can install the ICP from the 2210 into a 2220 or 2230. You will have to do a forced ICP firmware upgrade for it to work. You can go the other way as well.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 10-10-2015, 06:39 PM:

quote: Jim Cassedy
Even though the machine was out of warranty, either NEC or the seller didn't
charge for the fix since they acknowledged that it was a manufacturing error.

That's quite nice!

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
This does NOT count the power switch failures because none of those have ever taken a projector down for more than an hour.

Glad to know that all your customers are located within 15 minutes from your location. I tend to drive a lot.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 10-10-2015, 07:37 PM:

I've put in another ICP board and everything is now running as it should. It seems that when the ICP board quits, re-seating it doesn't help but installing another one does, so doesn't that eliminate the backplane as a source of the problem since when I replace the ICP board with a good one, all is well.

Everything's working now; hopefully it will continue to do so.

I've been getting lots of experience changing that board if nothing else.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 10-11-2015, 05:06 AM:

it's a long shot but maybe the bad connection would cause the existing ICP to get its OS corrupted. Maybe it just needs to be fully recovered (it's a different procedure than the software upgrade).

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-11-2015, 06:40 AM:

Again...have you tried putting a "failed" ICP in another projector to see if it works there?

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 10-11-2015, 12:27 PM:

I have only one projector so I have no way to do that. All I can do is change the board in the one that I have.