# Time To Get the Board Serviced



## Eboy87 (Apr 29, 2006)

So we have this old Rosco Eclipse light board at my school. It was installed when the theater was built, around '94 I believe, maybe '93. This thing was discontinued a month after it was built, and my school hasn't had it serviced since it was installed, and, well, it's starting to show.

Right now one of the all-girls schools in the area is renting the theater for their annual show chorus concert, and some of my good friends are in the show, but that's another story. Anyway, I'm training a new board op for next year, and for this show, we ran it on the fly off of the scenemasters. During one particular number last night, I was adjusting the level of our blue down lights, when, all of a sudden, stuff starts flashing on and off, GI wash goes out, gobos showing up all over the place, cyc lights going into disco mode, a complete disaster. This went on for another minute or two, and in the meantime, everyone is looking back at us in the booth, and the "director" comes running back to the booth going "what the 'f' was that! You're ruining my show...etc."

Meanwhile, I'm running around in a tizzy trying to get the **** thing to work correctly, finally hit it with a wrench and it worked fine for the rest of the show.

What really got me was that my girlfriend was in the audience, and she knew I was LD for this show. So, moral of the story, get the board serviced, unless you're planning on having a disco for the evening's performance.


----------



## soundman1024 (Apr 29, 2006)

I have no idea why hitting stuff makes it work, but sometimes it does. Its a strange phenomenon I would say. I to have fixed somethings by hitting them.


----------



## Eboy87 (Apr 29, 2006)

I don't think I'd exactly call it "hitting", I prefer "percussive maintenence"


----------



## Radman (Apr 29, 2006)

Maybe theres a short somwhere that made it go into a chase? Hah might want to get that fixed...


----------



## zac850 (Apr 30, 2006)

Like my daddy taught me since I was just a wee little lad, "if it still doesn't work, hit it with a bigger hammer"


Of course, my dad is a surgeon......


----------



## soundlight (Apr 30, 2006)

Once, my old laptop didn't work, and I dropped it on a table from about six inches up. A hard table. And then it worked!

I also have to regularly knock the area where the hard disk is on my newer laptop (still a used/reconditioned deal) because the disk sometimes doesn't want to start up when I turn it on. Percussive maintainence almost always works for me. (but i do have to send my newer one in, because it's got tons of problems and i have to work on the older one right now. and i really don't like win98 that much...)


----------



## fosstech (Apr 30, 2006)

soundman1024 said:


> I have no idea why hitting stuff makes it work, but sometimes it does. Its a strange phenomenon I would say. I to have fixed somethings by hitting them.



My old TV believe it or not was like that just before I bought a new one. The vertical beam steering electromagnet went out, and all the TV would show was an intensely bright horizontal line. The cliched hitting the side of the TV to make it work trick actually did...for a while at least!


----------



## Mayhem (May 2, 2006)

Service call is the correct option here. “percussive maintenance” as you call it demonstrates that you have a mechanical fault – bad connection, short, cracked board etc etc. Whilst a good thump can often fix it, it is always only a temporary fix and can actually cause the problem to get worse.

As the old saying goes: “Hammer to fit, paint to match!”


----------



## soundlight (May 3, 2006)

Which means that it is a good thing that you can make it work with "percussive maintainence," because that indicates (as Mayhem said) a mechanical fault, which is much easier to fix than replacing a bunch of components, and also is usually much cheaper.

Except in the case of laptops (as in my case) where this many times means that your hard drive is screwed up and you should get a new one before you lose all of your data.


----------



## Eboy87 (May 3, 2006)

Well, we're going to send the board in very soon, because it's been skipping cues lateley also. It'd go from cue 2 to cue 5 with one button press, even when the "next" icon has 3 in it.

In the meantime, we're suposed to get a loaner board so we can do our shows, I've heard talk that it's gonna be an ETC Express, so, I'm looking forward to it. 

On the other hand, I kinda hope the board can't be fixed, because we desperatly need a more up-to-date board than the dinosaur we have now.


----------



## nez (May 3, 2006)

if it doesnt fit force it if it breaks it needed to be fixed anyways


----------



## mbandgeek (May 3, 2006)

just out of curiosity, what is the company that made your board?


----------



## Eboy87 (May 3, 2006)

mbandgeek said:


> just out of curiosity, what is the company that made your board?


 
Rosco, as are our dimmers and gels


----------



## PhantomD (Jun 24, 2006)

Our late LSC analogue board had this problem.

It would run OK for a period and then replace your "look" onstage with some random thing of its own creation, hitting it sent it back to normal operations.

It would get worse later into the night.


----------

