Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: CLASS ACTION SUIT... please

This is topic CLASS ACTION SUIT... please in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Allan Barnes (Member # 5178) on 05-18-2017, 06:13 PM:

With the pending failure of QUBE SERVERS within 30 days (16 June 2017) and the future 2023 failure of DOLBY series 100 SERVERS .... ISN'T IT TIME FOR A CLASS ACTION SUIT ?

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-18-2017, 06:39 PM:

I can't speak to the Qube servers but the Dolby DSS100/DSP100 will have gone about 14-years since the last one came off the line. They were only warranted to work for 3-years after sale. You'd be hard pressed to find a sympathetic judge on that one, at least in the US (I don't know the Canadian legal system, at all). Getting 14 years on a 24/7 computer would be considered pretty good by most standards. Note, that is presuming you got the last one off the line. It could be closer to 20-years for the first one.

What are you going to do when the ICP certificate batteries start dying? They are soldered in. That might pose a bigger problem.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 05-18-2017, 07:06 PM:

I suppose the point is that there's no hardware problem and the software issue is "artificial" in that there's simply a hard-coded drop-dead date or time bomb built into the equipment.

The folks that purchased one of these things didn't lease it for a limited time, or at least that wasn't their intention or understanding.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 05-19-2017, 03:42 AM:

Frank's point seems solid. If the server fails after 14 years, then nobody can say anything. But if the server is programmed to stop working after 14 years, well, that should have been mentioned on the spec sheet somewhere?

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-19-2017, 04:38 AM:

It's a pretty interesting discussion, not only in the specific niche market of DCI equipment, but also in a broader sense.

More and more devices get loaded with certificates that tend to expire after a certain date. In many cases, those devices essentially become bricks after the date.

There's a difference here between a simple failure due to extensive usage. Those dates are set in "stone", they are pre-defined. Also, there's nothing even a knowledgeable person can do about it in many of those cases. It's not something that can be fixed with spare parts for example.

I think that you have a valid point in many jurisdictions, that selling something that has a given expiration date, which isn't appropriately communicated to the buyer, can be at least partly considered to be negligent and maybe even malicious, especially if the company is still in business and refuses to deliver an acceptable solution.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-19-2017, 07:52 AM:

I'm sure this could get complicated. Does breaking have to mean from use or component failure? Or does breaking simply mean that it ceases to function regardless of cause? What is a company's obligation to support a product after it is discontinued?

I tend to agree, if there is a hard-coded termination date for a product (any product), it should have been clearly communicated at the time of purchase. In simpler, cinema terms, a movie ticket expires at the conclusion of the show and it is printed on the ticket what show it is good for. A server does not convey that information and I don't recall it in any of the sales literature.

Note, series 1 projectors have a 3D license expiration date too but TI kicked that way out there with version 13 of their software such that nobody would reasonably expect any of those projectors to still function.

My guess is that even if they were to make the certificates last longer, the batteries will surely fail and lose the certificate on even current servers before one hits year 20 though. So is a battery failure sufficient to make it failure due to machine? There are plenty of ICPs (and Enigmas) out there that have failed (lost their certificate) simply due to premature battery failure.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 05-19-2017, 08:41 AM:

I am not a lawyer, but there is a difference between a warranty, which is a period of time the manufacturer takes the responsibility and expense if keeping a product working, and the expectation a customer has the a product will continue to work after the warranty period unless they are explicitly told before purchase otherwise.

Envision this in the automobile industry. The last car I bought came with a a 3 year warranty. Imagine the field day lawyers would have if 8 years later the car died and was not repairable for no other reason than a date activated kill switch in the car's computer software.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-19-2017, 09:47 AM:

You could also make a point about suppliers asking the full price of an ICP for something like a failed battery, but it will become a pretty hairy argument. Should the manufacturer be required to give a cheaper means of service than replacing the entire ICP? Like a procedure to re-issue a certificate to the ICP after the failed battery has been replaced?

But the ICP is part of a bigger machine. If you replace it with a functioning one (and given no other defects are present), the machine will be able to operate again for the intended purposes.

In this particular case, no spare part will help you, because there are no spare parts that work after the given date. The date effectively works as a kill-switch for the machine.

General doctrine follows that manufacturers can be held accountable for delivering products with known defects or limitations which aren't fully disclosed. If it's not a defect, it's certainly a limitation.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-19-2017, 04:11 PM:

I am not a lawyer, either, but it seems that the basic elements of class action lawsuits are being missed here. Generally, only the lawyers win (consumers get some token
amount, but nothing approaching the actual damages), and almost certainly the "class" in this situation is too small to be worth the time of any lawyer to take up this issue. Individual users are, of course, free to sue the manufacturer.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 05-19-2017, 04:49 PM:

True - but the bad pr for Qube could force them towards a better offer for their (ex-, I presume) customers.

Keep in mind, those Qube XP-D certificates do not just expire in 2017. They already expired a couple of years ago and were prolongated a few times, and, it seems, a single year only each time. So, fact seems to be, at the time, Qube sold D-Cinema servers with a 3 years certificate expiration time. WTF...

- Carsten

Posted by David J Hilsgen (Member # 2614) on 05-19-2017, 07:14 PM:

So what is the date on the dolby dss200 & the doremi 2k4 server when they expire

Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 05-19-2017, 09:03 PM:

Speaking from experience, Scott is correct, the lawyers win and it is very, very hard to force anything but a modest settlement even when your case is a "slam dunk" like a clear-cut breach of contract. The mechanics and procedural actions available are enough to drag it for years, and only then, if for some reason they're tired of dealing with you, would a big enterprise ever consider settling with you. A "win" is tough. You'll pay hundreds of thousands to fight it, for the large corporations it's just a cost of business, they can fight you forever.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-19-2017, 10:59 PM:

Seems like this bit of manufacture chicanery is not limited to the cinema market; we were just informed that our Pitney Bowes bulk postage machine, a monster that weighs over 100lbs (all metal) and is 4 feet long and cost 9 grand in 1998, they told us as of July 1st, it will no longer function. Mind you, this is a 95% mechanical device that feeds stacks of letters thru its belly and stamps them. There is a small electronic/computer "Head" that gets attached to the big unit and communicates with P-B with information about how much money is in your account as well as information about postage classes and rates. We have been told that even tho nothing at all is wrong with the mechanical unit, P-B will no longer communicate with the Head. Basically the same issue -- a manufacturer simply decideing to kill a machine that you've bought and paid for and was never told that was going to eventually happen.

I don't see how this isn't a legal issue. The manufacture, without forewarning at the time of your purchase is simply deciding that they are killing a perfectly functioning piece of hardware and turning it into a door stop or maybe a nice planter, but in all likelyhood, it probably will wind up in landfill somewhere along with the other thousands upon thousands of postage machines companies are going to have to replace. And of course P-B was immediately trying to hard-sell us another 00lb 4ft piece of hardware that will do exactly what the one we have did (and is still capable of doing). There outa be a law!

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-20-2017, 03:48 AM:

Back in the day...I worked in a law office, ironically, that had a P&B postage meter and used said meter daily. Not only would it print the postage on the meter, it would seal the envelope too. You fed a stack of envelopes in, it would seal and stamp them on the way out. For non-standard letters/packages, you hit a button and it would give you a pre-moistened, stamped sticker. This was in the '70s and long before computer anything. It merely had mechanical number wheels and that is how it kept track of how much postage you used. I wonder if they ever stopped honoring those machines? And since I know law offices had them, you'd think a case like this would have been tried.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 05-20-2017, 03:58 AM:

Frank,

That is slightly different in my opinion if I understand that correctly. Probably they decided not to support the communication anymore - intentionally or because of technology advancements.
If Qube decided not to support the server anymore or the Industry decided not to let you use that server for their features because of <type your DCI regulation of choice here> then there is probably nothing you can do.

But in this case there is a set date in the server which was added by the manufacturer. After that date the server won't play encrypted content. It's not that the encryption has changed and the server no longer supports it.

Posted by Kevin Fairchild (Member # 4985) on 05-20-2017, 04:08 AM:

quote: Steve Guttag
I can't speak to the Qube servers but the Dolby DSS100/DSP100 will have gone about 14-years since the last one came off the line

Can't be. The DSS200 didn't launch until summer 2009. You're saying the last DSS100 was manufactured in 2003?

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 05-20-2017, 12:37 PM:

I can't say anything about Qube, but I do wonder how much care the manufacturers put into this insanely-expensive equipment some of us paid for out of our wallets.

In the past 5 years, I've lost 2 of those redundant power supply modules out of my 3 servers. I've had to pull one server out and re-seat a card that otherwise hadn't been disturbed. I've had a few issues that required an IMB be reseated, again, where the board was screwed in and hadn't been touched. Most recently, both my service company and Dolby suspect an update caused an issue where Dolby thinks the new software might have "damaged" 2 of my IMB's. What?!!

Of course, having just passed warranty, the "damage" to my hardware, supposedly caused by an update, sent out by the manufacturer, is not covered. So... I either buy new boards or go back to the software version I had in there to begin with... and possibly stay there.

Oh... and now I learn I shouldn't expect more than 5 years or so out of enterprise-grade hard drives?... at a drive-in that runs 1/3 to maybe 1/2 the hours an indoor does?

Frankly, I have $600 Dell desktops that have given me less trouble than these $XX,000 servers... and it's not that they're awful, just that for that kind of money, I would have expected them to be darn near bulletproof.

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 05-20-2017, 01:19 PM:

Steve those strait mechanical postage meters had to be periodically take into a post office that add postage value to them. The company would pay for the postage in advance and added to the meter. I am not sure if the post office still does this. When the postage stored in the meter would run down to a certain point the meter would lock until more postage was added at a post office.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-20-2017, 04:40 PM:

Kevin, pay attention. The claim is that the DSP100 certificate will expire in 2023. The last DSP100 came off the line in 2009 and that is where the 14 years comes from.

The postage meter at the office I worked NEVER left and went to the post office. A person from P&B would come by and read the meter much the same way a gas, electric or water meter person would read the mechanical meter and bill you based on where you were last month versus this month.. The only "lock" on it was if you wanted to use more than $1.00 in postage you had to press a release button to move the dollar selector..

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-21-2017, 07:02 PM:

I'm amazed that Dolby has never seen a class action suit just on power supply failures alone. Soooooo many failures starting with the CP-50 and moving up and on that I can't even begin to count them. The only very reliable one was the CP-100. I am thankful that Dolbly is out of my life for good.

On the Qube servers, this would also include all the Datasat servers that were sold... So it's more than just a few, I know of at least one Wyoming customer that I used to service that had a large number of those.

Mark

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-21-2017, 11:25 PM:

quote:
I worked in a law office, ironically, that had a P&B postage meter and used said meter daily....I wonder if they ever stopped honoring those machines?

If you're talking about Pitney Bowes, they probably will honor any machine as long as you're still paying for the "rent" and willing to pay their highway-robbery prices for ink or other supplies. A bigger ripoff company I've never seen. They're worse than Hewlett Packard.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-22-2017, 02:39 AM:

quote: Dave Bird
Speaking from experience, Scott is correct, the lawyers win and it is very, very hard to force anything but a modest settlement even when your case is a "slam dunk" like a clear-cut breach of contract. The mechanics and procedural actions available are enough to drag it for years, and only then, if for some reason they're tired of dealing with you, would a big enterprise ever consider settling with you. A "win" is tough. You'll pay hundreds of thousands to fight it, for the large corporations it's just a cost of business, they can fight you forever.

I think, in this particular case it would be just to force the manufacturer to come up with a solution. Nobody got injured for example. The only thing people want is to continue using their equipment, without buying new equipment. In order to facilitate this, a simple software update would be sufficient. This software update could be provided by the manufacturer at minimal costs and overhead. This way, they could extend the certificate another 10 years.

For Qube, it's already pretty late, within less than a month, people simply won't be able to use the affected servers anymore. So, people might already have bought new equipment or they will start losing shows. We're talking about potentially real, quantifiable damages here. Those kind of cases will get hairy and in a class action suit, you will most likely never recoup all your damages.

The only other option is to take it up against them individually, but if you're just a small, independent shop, chances are, you simply cannot afford to take those risks. All in all, the lawyers always win, but I think a class action suit would be the only alternative. Often, companies might want to give in, before the lawsuit actually started. It's not like they don't have anything to loose here and if they act fast, they can still fix it with minimum costs from their side.

quote: Jack Ondracek
Frankly, I have $600 Dell desktops that have given me less trouble than these $XX,000 servers... and it's not that they're awful, just that for that kind of money, I would have expected them to be darn near bulletproof.

The problem here is that the hardware that goes into your $XX,000 servers isn't necessarily much better than the hardware that goes into your $600 Dell desktop. Also, there are far more of those $600 Dell desktops being produced. So a production flaw in those will be far more costly than a production flaw in those servers.

You can buy most of the hardware going into those servers off-the-shelf for less than a tenth of the retail price, but you're paying for the package. You're paying for the stuff you cannot get off the shelf, which is essentially the IMB, the software and the research that went into it.

Unfortunately, most "enterprise" stuff works like this nowadays. What you're essentially getting is an "off-the-shelf" base with some task-specific magic tacked on. The age in where a piece of electronics was designed specifically for just the task at hand, are pretty much over. Even the latest iterations of sound processors are essentially just PC servers.

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
I'm amazed that Dolby has never seen a class action suit just on power supply failures alone. Soooooo many failures starting with the CP-50 and moving up and on that I can't even begin to count them. The only very reliable one was the CP-100. I am thankful that Dolbly is out of my life for good.

I think it would be much harder to start any kind of class action suit based on those incidents. Your customers would need to join the class action suit and it would be far more difficult to get them in line about a failed PSU than for a failed server. Also, it would be far harder to prove a general design flaw, since the misfortune seems to span multiple models. You probably would need opinions of multiple engineers, who must come to roughly the same conclusion. Something like an expiring certificate at least isn't something that needs a lot of research. Any knowledgeable person can certify the expiry date works as an effective kill-switch.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-22-2017, 06:18 AM:

Remember that class action lawsuits happen because some lawyer thinks that the "class" of affected people is large enough to make it worth his time to bring the suit. Two that I remember being part of involved price-fixing for recorded music and price-fixing for milk (which applied to anyone who had bought a record, tape, or music CD and to anyone who had bought milk, respectively--in both cases, pretty much everyone would qualify). You also see these for things like defective car models (which sell in the millions) and medical products (also manufactured in the millions).

How many of these cinema servers were sold--a few thousand, perhaps? The class is jus too small for any lawyer to bother with, unfortunately.

I agree that it is shameful to build a self-destructing product, but the only real solution in this case (short of filing one's own lawsuit) would be to not buy from that company again.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-22-2017, 12:17 PM:

Steve, that's exactly what the mechanical part (the bulk) of our machine does. Obviously those mechanical functions haven't needed to change in decades -- you still need to load a stack of envelopes into it, they are fed into the belly where they are stamped with the price of the stamp now set not my hand, but by the electronic head, and the envelopes sealed. Other than the electronic add-on, I bet the units probably even look about the same.

What is so frustrating is that massive machine is still totally capable of doing all that mechanical stuff which the new, $10,000 replacement unit will still have to do...there's not going to be any improvement in the mechanics of feeding, stamping and sealing envelopes or printing out a stick-on stamp for odd packages. So whatever the change in the electronics (perhaps more security protocols ala DCI compliance BS) you can't tell me they can't make their new protocols talk to that mechanical device.

Plus, I can't imagine what new safety protocols need to be in place since those are all strictly mandated by the USPS. The proof that nothing significant has change in USPS protocols is that anyone can sign up for stamps.com and print stamps on envelopes or print postage for packages on any consumer printer! All I am saying is that whatever nonsense P-B is trying to claim necessitates making their well-build mechanical "printer" obsolete (a unity, btw, which will probably keep working without a hiccup for another decade), is just so much corporate bullshit and greed.

I guarantee, if I had the time and the mind to do it, I would be able to hook a PC to that P-B machine and make it print postage via a stamps.com account. Stamps.com has no trouble printing to ANY printer and in reality, that's all the P-B unit is.

Sorry...didn't mean to hijack the thread, but it's the same principal -- purposefully killing a product without there being some factor that really necessitates it. Forcing the consumer to replace a perfectly functioning unit in order to increase corporate profit shouldn't be an acceptable (or legal) reason.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 05-22-2017, 12:56 PM:

There is a big difference between discontinuing support for an old product and designing a product to fail after a certain date, without telling the customers in advance.

Have the owners of Qube servers been notified of this upcoming fail date, or is it just something techies are aware of? If they have not notified the customers, I assume they could also be sued for any lost shows.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-23-2017, 03:44 AM:

I don't think you can force any organization to support any product forever. Unfortunately, with any product directly tied to "on-line" services, those product essentially can become bricks for their owners, once the underlying services are discontinued.

It's probably a premature idea, but maybe a law requiring companies to open up their closed interfaces and designs, as soon as they decide to discontinue the services the products rely on, could help. In such a case, third parties could still jump into the void and offer services to continue the life of the product.

If, for example, PB would open up their discontinued postal meters, some third party supplier could possibly still provide equivalent services.

Obviously, such a requirement could become a problem for security related implementations like DCI equipment.

Posted by William Kucharski (Member # 7246) on 05-23-2017, 06:24 AM:

The biggest problem with that is that software is not written in a vacuum.

Software for new products usually includes library code originally written for other products and to reveal the code for discontinued products would expose the company's IP.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-24-2017, 08:53 AM:

Yeah, closed IP might be a problem for companies to fulfil such an obligation, but in many cases you would not need to open-source your actual software. In the absence of any kill-switches or external dependencies, it's not like software suddenly stops working. In many cases opening up the interfaces themselves should be sufficient.

Posted by Greg Routenburg (Member # 1742) on 05-24-2017, 01:03 PM:

I suppose that it's conceivable that a DSP100 could still be running in 2023. They were a very well built piece of equipment and run like a tank so long as you keep the fans going. Finding a DSS100 to go with it might be a bit of a trick. The parts for those are drying up pretty quickly. I suspect that Dolby figures that if there are any still running in 2023, the number of complaints that are filed will amount to not much more than a nuisance. This is all assuming that DCP formatting will remain the same such that the players will even be able to process the content. As Steve said, I think the S2 ICP batteries will be a much bigger problem before anyone need worry about their DSP100 certificate expiries. Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating for this sort of behavior by server manufacturers. It all just seems a little moot. Those with Qube servers are another story. If I had any of those, I'd be a little cranky.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-24-2017, 01:20 PM:

Having a specifically coded kill switch date programmed into a piece of high priced, computer-based hardware does seem very unethical.

On the other hand, I can understand the motivations behind this. Commercial cinema projection is a very small, niche market. The companies making software and hardware for this market are not charity organizations. They have to be able to earn a profit in order to survive. And they'll lose money providing support for ancient hardware and software several generations removed from what they're currently selling. Providing such support is a hit on human resources and it discourages customers from buying new products to replace the old. These companies are only going to make money off of continually selling new generations of equipment.

There is nothing computer-based that is guaranteed any form of long term life. 7 to 10 years is about the most anyone should expect for the life span of a modern digital product. So many kinds of chips, IC boards and other components are produced for only a short amount of time. The production lines change to something else very quickly. That leaves behind a limited supply of replacement parts. A company has only so much room to store that kind of stuff. After a digital device is several years old or more it shouldn't surprise anyone that when a part in that device breaks it often can't be replaced unless one can find a similar old device with a still working part.

The PC computing platform is a huge market, one where vendors like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe have incurred the anger of customers when they ended support for old versions of operating systems, software and hardware. Building backward compatibility too far in the past can create serious limits on new advancements. Even digital files you create with a given application can be rendered dead after so many years.

I'm not surprised by the appearance of kill switches in pro cinema gear. Deliberately short product life is something I complained about loudly before the movie theater industry began its widespread conversion from film projection to digital projection. Companies who make digital equipment have their own economic realities and limits. But so do movie theater operators. Theaters operators have been used to getting decades of life out of a film projector, something which costs a lot less than a digital projector. Theaters are not set up to absorb the costs of buying a new projector every several years, basically on the same replacement cycle as that of a good quality personal computer.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 05-24-2017, 02:43 PM:

The issue is not that there is a kill switch, but that the purchasers were not told it was there, and that it could be activated (or extended) at the whim of the manufacturer.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-24-2017, 02:48 PM:

These aren't kill switches, per-say. They are expiring certificates. I don't know the rules and regulations on certificate duration to be compliant with whatever FIPS rules or DCI rules are required. TI had an early expiration date on their 3D feature for series 1 projectors. By updating to beyond TI 13, it kicked it WAY out to "3D expires 04 JUL 2129". That clearly is a sufficiently long time that nobody will mind when the 3D feature doesn't work then (except maybe collectors of ancient movie projection apparatus/museums). However, that was a feature, not a security certificate.

Posted by Mike Renlund (Member # 4675) on 05-25-2017, 01:54 PM:

Dolby Media Block certificates are available at ftp.cinema.dolby.com. You can download and check the certificate expiration date.

The first DSP100 certificates expire in 2031, with the last ones expiring in January 2040.

Mike Renlund
Dolby

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-26-2017, 06:12 AM:

Thanks for the clarification Mike! So, it would appear, the certificate in the DSP100 gets you about 40 years (presuming the last expiring one is related to the last unit produced and the first expiring one is related to the first one produced. 40-years! Is it reasonable to presume any of this equipment will be running in 40-years? Is it reasonable to presume that the standards for digital cinema (for which it will just be called cinema, presuming cinemas are around then)?

Does anyone think that whatever battery device used to retain that certificate will be functional by then too?

I'm curious, can you answer if there is some sort of rule/regulation/requirement as to how long a certificate MAY last?

Posted by Greg Routenburg (Member # 1742) on 05-26-2017, 11:26 AM:

For the DSP100s, that sounds quite reasonable.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-30-2017, 06:56 AM:

quote: Steve Guttag
I'm curious, can you answer if there is some sort of rule/regulation/requirement as to how long a certificate MAY last?

There aren't really any cross industry guidelines or regulations on certificate expiry dates. Some industries have their own regulations and guidelines regarding specific implementations.

The consensus seems to be that the expiry date has to be based on the use case. If a certificate cannot be easily revoked for example and the expiry date is important for access control, then you obviously should go for a rather short period.

For stuff that should last longer, like root certificates, intermediate certificates or device certificates, best practice seems to be to make a reasonable assumption of what the expected time-frame will be, in which the underlying private key will still be secure, given its strength.

A period of 40 years should be more than reasonable for any digital equipment. I'm not sure if we can make an accurate prediction of what computing would look like in 40 years though. If anybody invents a working quantum computer with sufficient amounts of qubits in the meantime, RSA and ECC will become obsolete immediately. [Wink]

Still, I think manufacturers should be more forthcoming in opening up a platform in any reasonable way, after it's been abandoned by them.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-30-2017, 11:35 AM:

quote: Steve Guttag
Does anyone think that whatever battery device used to retain that certificate will be functional by then too?

Isn't it reasonable to assume that if the battery should go dead you just replace it and then reinstall the certificate again? This is something that on a GDC, can only be done at GDC and why it is important to replace the certificate batteries in your GDC's in a timely manner.

Mark

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 06-01-2017, 07:21 AM:

I never even tried looking at them so closely, but I guess it wouldn't be too complicated to find a jumper near the battery, or dig up the traces to testpoints, etc., so to bridge the old battery with a backup supply of the same type, then swap the on board battery. Sure the better idea than to let the board die wittingly.

Just set up a strategy in time for all occuring boards/battery types.

- Carsten