# What is this wall port?



## backstagebadger (May 15, 2012)

Hi all,
My first post- yay.

I've been a long time lurker here, and just wanted to ask a question for once.

In my school's auditorium there is a jack on the wall that looks like this:



Does anyone know what the heck these are? Our auditorium was built 1989ish.
They are labeled Proj A and Proj B, and there are 2 ports like the one above on the front of the stage, Stage Left and Right.
There is a port like this at the booth where the lights and sounds happen.
There is a port like this in our upstairs patch room that has a window that overlooks the auditorium.

It has 5 pins per connector, 10 pins total per wall plate I believe.
I need to test to see if the ports on the stage connect with the booth. If they do, I would like to have new ethernet ports put in on both ends and then buy 2 VGA over Ethernet boxes.

Any ideas, suggestions, or comments?

Thanks.

backstagebadger


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## len (May 15, 2012)

the pix is too blurry for me to figure it out. My guess is it has something to do with video, since it's labeled "proj" or short for Projector. I bet that video back in the 80's and 90's had a lot of cables and connectors that are no longer used.


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## BGW (May 15, 2012)

Those are for slide projectors. That particular socket is used by many of the later machines, most notably the Kodak Ektagraphic or Carousel projectors.


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## chausman (May 15, 2012)

BGW said:


> Those are for slide projectors.



Which means (probably) not suitable for trying to run video signal.


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## Van (May 15, 2012)

chausman said:


> Which means (probably) not suitable for trying to run video signal.



No "probably" about it. That's for a remote or disolve unit for Old school slide projector and the wiring inside is mostlikely just a straight 5 - 6 wire 16ga.


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## BGW (May 15, 2012)

chausman said:


> Which means (probably) not suitable for trying to run video signal.



Yes- those cables are unshielded and do not have twisted pairs, either. They were only designed to carry analog signals (consisting of just low-voltage pulses). I think you'd have pretty unsatisfactory results. You could, however, map out the entire run of the conduit connecting those boxes and pull new cables through.


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## derekleffew (May 15, 2012)

Well, how else could one expect to advance slides without a wired pickle?


Kodak Slide Projector Replacement Remote Control

Follow these instructions: slideinstructions . But you'll need a male-male 5pin DIN cable at the projector and possibly an M-F extension cable for the remote.

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backstagebadger said:


> ... They are labeled Proj A and Proj B, and there are 2 ports like the one above on the front of the stage, Stage Left and Right.
> There is a port like this at the booth where the lights and sounds happen.
> There is a port like this in our upstairs patch room that has a window that overlooks the auditorium. ...


So FOUR locations total? I'm sure they are all wired together, so any can be used for the projector and any other for the remote. If installing CAT5, you'd likely want each location home run to somewhere centrally located.


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## backstagebadger (May 15, 2012)

I'll ask our electrician (the only one in the town allowed to make changes to the school's electrical) to see if he has a conduit map, and if he'd be willing to run the ethernet through there. Is there any recommended and economical Ethernet to VGA converters you all might suggest?

backstagebadger


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## backstagebadger (May 15, 2012)

derekleffew said:


> Well, how else could one expect to advance slides without a wired pickle?
> View attachment 6999
> 
> Kodak Slide Projector Replacement Remote Control
> ...



Oh wow this is great! Now we know what it was used for haha...


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## MPowers (May 15, 2012)

The two ports allowed you to have two projectors mounted on a stack frame, one directly above the other and aimed and focused exactly the same. The two ports went to a Dove or Genesis controller that would fade one projector up while dimming the other out. Thus you could switch from picture to picture seamlessly. With just one projector you have roughly 1.75 seconds of black between slides. There were projector stacking frames for 2, 3 and 4 projectors. With only two projectors each slide had to show for about 2 seconds while the dark projector changed slides. With 3 or 4 the time could be correspondingly shorter. When using this kind of set-up each projector had a "test" slide with a target and cross hairs in the #1 slot. One of the pre-show checks each day was to make sure the cross hairs and focus and zoom all lined up together.

You could also use two of the pins ( I forget which two now, it's been a while) and hook the lamp of a carousel to a stage pin plug (or whatever your stage had) and plug it into a dimmed circuit.

Of course this is all out dated by video walls and the extremely high powered video projectors available today. I know the hardware still exists and there are some old 8080 computers that can run the Genesis program, but I feel it is highly unlikely that anyone is still using them. For one thing it is getting more and more difficult to make or obtain 35mm slides.


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## derekleffew (May 16, 2012)

MPowers said:


> ...You could also use two of the pins ( I forget which two now, it's been a while) and hook the lamp of a carousel to a stage pin plug (or whatever your stage had) and plug it into a dimmed circuit. ...


The 5pin DIN only does forward/reverse and sometimes focus. 


Construction and Connection Details for the 35mm Slide Control Box

For lamp intensity control, a dimmer is wired across the two pins just below the DIN connector.

slideinstructions
(Between the power cord and DIN in the photo above.)

Dissolve units, such as the AVL Dove X2 had three 7pin cords for lamp/slide control. The projectors still needed hard power for fans & motors.
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(If only I could remove useless information like this from my brain, I might have room for more current data. And might even be open to new ideas. Doubtful, but possible.)


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## BGW (May 16, 2012)

I must confess that I actually like slide projectors. I'll take a little graininess over screen door pixels any day.


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## chausman (May 16, 2012)

BGW said:


> I must confess that I actually like slide projectors. I'll take a little graininess over screen door pixels any day.



Then your sitting too close to the screen, or haven't dealt with the slide projectors enough. Not terrible, but certainly not fun, at least to me.


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