BARCO LD baord in a Christie projector

[Christopher Mondt]

Hello colleges

is there a way to contvert a BARCO LD board to put it into a Christie Series 2 projector?

Any experience?



Thanks for a reply


Christopher


PS. or does anyone has a working LD board in stock?

[Steve Guttag]

While it will physically fit and you can even access it using the ICP/LD program, where it will fail is the login list. The backdoor passwords the projector uses is different from the three OEMs. Even running an update script on them won't work because when it gets to the login list, the various update programs will lack the proper login.

[Leo Enticknap]

I don't know if there is an equivalent available for the LD/Enigma board (because I have never needed it, and therefore never asked Barco for it), but the one transfer of these secure boards between projector brands that I know you can do is moving an old school TI ICP from either an NEC or a Christie into a Barco (assuming that you have the faceplate to swap).

Barco makes available an "ICP Recovery Tool" that nukes it to a completely blank board and then rewrites everything from the ground up, including that login list. So you can move ICPs from the other two to a Barco, but keep in mind that doing this is a one-way ticket: you cannot then move the Barco-ized ICP back into an NEC or a Christie, because NEC and Christie do not have an equivalent tool (or at least if they do, they don't make it available to field techs).

[Dave Macaulay]

This is a pain. We have several spare LD units that rotate on chargers, they are indistinguishable. If one is unmarked - we just put B C or N on with a sharpie - we have to try it in up to 2 projectors to see what it works in.
I can't think of any good reason to make them incompatible.

[Steve Guttag]

Since the LD is the security manager, the LD has different logins (from the projector...as a service tech, NEC and Christie have the same password via the LD program and Barco has their own, which is the same as the ICP login).

Both Christie and NEC have their own ICP recovery programs though not a clean and easy as Barco's. Barco just runs a bat file from a command prompt on your PC. With NEC and Christie, you have to kludge your way (physically) into the projector's internal network (on the Christie, you do it from the TPC and on NEC it is at their router...you need to get on its LAN side.

I seem to recall recovering a Christie ICP using the Barco program up until the login list part and then switching to the Christie program for that last step. It has been a while though.

Likewise on our growing Enigma collection, I write on the unit which flavor it is. I have spare Barco SDI boards and the Dolby IMS Docker to use as a charger as well as one of the (rare) USL IMB chargers so I can do 2 at a time. I used to use the official Barco charger cable but that doesn't light any LEDs...you don't know if you are really charging or what. I prefer to see the LEDs light up and the right ones being green, red or dimly glowing. Then I know it is a live one.

[Dave Macaulay]

Steve: I haven't seen a Christie or NEC recovery process for the ICP. And my normal laptop won't complete the Barco one, crashes out around step 14 I think... no idea why, I have an old XP laptop only used for ICP recovery. Weird, I know. Have to get a new W11 one soon anyway.
We have quite a few Barco SDI boards (bunch of server upgrades) and use them with Barco chargers. LED on the board says it has power. I wish the bastard tiny DC connector was about 1000x more durable.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Besides the "backdoor login", there might be other little differences in the firmware running between them. I guess the LD does some kind of cryptographic handshake with the projector to ensure it's communicating with a "legit" device?

I've seen "Barco branded" LD spares available, at Strong, on Ebay and also several other integrators.

[Leo Enticknap]

And my normal laptop won't complete the Barco one, crashes out around step 14 I think... no idea why

Are you opening the command prompt window as an administrator? I seem to remember that you have to in order for the Barco .bat file to run successfully. It works that way on my W11 laptop.

[Christopher Mondt]

There is this document for Christie but I never heard from someone that it worked.

https://www.christiedigital.com/globalassets/resources/public/020-103559-01-christie-lit-inst-sht-pib-recovery.pdf

[Christopher Mondt]

So what should I do with all my broken LDs?

I have collected 6 over the Years from sveral cinemas.

Any idea if there is a backdoor at CHRISTIEs to recover them...?

[Carsten Kurz]

If you just collected them - throw them away. The need to charge them regularly has been discussed on this forum often. Their days have passed. Many of them even do die with proper charging because of aging low current security switch issues.

I don't think any of the three DLP OEMs have means to recover them. This would have to be done at the factory that manufactured them for Texas Instruments.

[Marco Giustini]

So what should I do with all my broken LDs?

I have collected 6 over the Years from sveral cinemas.

They're all paperweights now

[Dave Macaulay]

"Are you opening the command prompt window as an administrator? I seem to remember that you have to in order for the Barco .bat file to run successfully. It works that way on my W11 laptop."

Yes.
I appreciate the replies, but I don't have any idea why it fails. And, more importantly, I don't care. No other issues with anything on this computer. ICP recovery is a pretty unusual need, and for me the only ICP problem that has needed a recovery is that the Barco diagnostic report process crashes. That is not an emergency. And it has become much less common, probably some software patch stopped it. I can just make a note to bring the laptop that will perform a recovery the next time I'm on site or for another tech to do it if they're first.

[Christopher Mondt]

Of course, this is very old stuff.

But it is always amazing how many of these boards are still running every day since Years...

We provide KDMs for several filmfestivals in Europe and nearly 40% of the certificates still come from Dolphincards…

[Leo Enticknap]

This illustrates the point that James Gardiner and others have made in other contexts here. DCI projectors, servers, and media blocks were designed with an intended reliable service life of around a decade, with an industry-wide assumption being made that equipment refresh cycles would take place at around this interval. But for all except the mega-chains this hasn't happened, because the money hasn't been there to do it. Back in the summer we got a call from a small chain we hadn't dealt with before: screen down in a 15-plex. 11 of the 15 projectors are still Series 1. The screen down had been caused by the failure of both power supply modules in the Doremi DCP2000 server. There were beeps coming from several others that were operating with one NFG module and one good one. I took a module from one of the few DCP2000s in the booth that still had both working, fired up the DCP2000 that had bitten the dust, and found that its Dolphin card had died: I guess, because its battery had gone flat, but the media block had continued to work for as long as the server had mains power. Apart from lamp changes, it was immediately obvious that no maintenance had been done in that booth for several years. The audio stuff was still film era (CP65s with Doremi AES67 to analog boxes added).

The transition to digital cinema had been sold to exhibitors on the promises that the equipment would last forever and that it didn't need regular attention from a skilled technician. They raised the money and did the business planning to convert on those assumptions. What I saw was the end result, 13-14 years later.