Strong SCDC3 platter diagnostic SW

[Elia Orselli]

Hello!
I have been asked to support a SCDC3 Strong platter which stops randomly taking up film. I haven’t diagnosed the issue myself and I am not familiar with Strong Platters but I understand the platter stops spinning and film goes on the floor. Failsafe switched were bypassed to test and it seems to be happening with multiple platters so it shouldn’t be a motor or castor switch issue.
Reading the manual found online I see that the take-up assembly has a microcontroller in it, an EEPROM and a diagnostic post (RS232?).
I’d like to connect to that port to see if I get any useful information but I don’t have the software nor the pinout for the connection. Could anybody help? Does anybody have schematics for this platter?

Any ideas is welcome as - as I said - I am not familiar with Strong Platters.

Thanks a lot!

[Tj Hopland]

Those came out later in the film game and I never took care of that many of em so memory could be a bit off and I could be blending different models and brands......

I think there was a cable and software and I remember using it to do a health check of the sensor to see if they were nearing the end of life. I remember replacing a LED or sensor board assembly but I don't remember if you had to use the software to reset something or if it was just a plug and play. I think the sensors and maybe the whole board assembly were the same between the payouts and takeup and I seem to recall before we started stocking spares we could steal one from a payout module to get the take up going again.

They lasted a decent amount of time. I think we just started seeing issues and doing the health checks and having to replace some LEDs about the time D cinema was coming in and that was only in the larger complexes running a heavy schedule. Lots of people may have never put enough run time on them to have issues before converting to D cinema so Strong may not have sold that many of the diagnostic kits. I think the kit was a cable, software disc, and a manual that may have had some additional troubleshooting in it.

Really stressing the memory banks but did these have a USB B port on them? Or USB mini? Or maybe that was an evolution of the boards? I'm probably also mixing in memories of the previous version which was the DMC. DMC's had a lot more issues especially with I think what were power supply modules and I think were the ones with multiple multi color status LEDs. SCDC just had a single status LED? I remember some platter having some sort of a little header type plug for diagnostics but USB also seems familiar.

[Elia Orselli]

Thanks TJ - the manual seems to confirm there were two versions, RS232 and USB. I’d love to be able to access the diagnostic as that would remove all the doubts of what the issue is - assuming the issue is with the take-up assembly.

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[Tj Hopland]

That fits with my memory. I remember looking for a number, apparently 13. Interesting they say payout and rewind act differently, I wonder if they are different boards? Maybe it was just the led modules I remember stealing from the payouts or maybe it was the DMC they were the whole module was the same and could be swapped.

[Allan Barnes]

If you have more than one BRAIN ? Swap and retest
.