Marriage is not active error IMS3000 NEC projector

[Luis Achtar]

Hello! We are having this error every 3 months or so. First I will like to understand what causes the error and if there is a way to prevented. We bought new NEC projectors 2 years ago. It should not fail or is this common?
Thanks for any help

[Leo Enticknap]

It should not fail. Under normal circumstances, once the marriage procedure has been done, it should not be broken unless a tamper detection switch is opened.

If the marriage is spontaneously breaking without the card cage side panel having been opened, then I would suggest troubleshooting in the following order:

• Ensure that the card cage side panel is properly seated, including all the hooks at the bottom, and that its tamper detection switch is making a good contact.
• Ensure that the connections to the tamper switches on the side panel and in the card cage itself are secure, at both ends of the cables.
• Clean the PCI contacts and reseat the IMS3000.
• Investigate the possibility that one of the tamper switches may be going bad
• Investigate the possibility that the motherboard (what Barco calls the backplane) and/or the CPU board may have a problem.
• Investigate the possibility of a fault with the IMS3000 (download a "detailed report" log package and put it through Dolby Log Analyzer).

NEC did go overboard, both with the number of tamper switches, their propensity to malfunction, and the fragility of the hardware. They can and do fail, and some are very difficult to replace (e.g. the one at the back of the card cage), I'm afraid.