Problem with Martin Mac250s

[bumclouds]

Hey guys,


Little problem im having with Martin Mac250's... When I daisy chain 2 of them together, the second one does not respond!!

i.e
[Freestyler] ---- [Mac1] ----- [Mac2] (mac2 does not respond!)

And if I swap the two, argh!:
[Freestyler] ---- [Mac2] ----- [Mac1] (mac1 does not respond!)


And if I put either the two individually in front of Freestyler:
[Freestyler] ---- [Mac1]

Or:
[Freestyler] ---- [Mac2]

We're all good. And just to throw a spanner in the works, trackspots and shiva's (other fixtures) work beautifully AFTER the macs... but the second mac in the chain wont respond.. strange....

[Freestyler] ---- [Mac2] ----- [Mac1] -----[Trackspot]-----[Shiva]----[Etc]

Any number of other fixtures daisy chained on the end all work well, besides the second Mac in the daisy chain.



Any idea what's going on?




Andrew!!!

[bumclouds]

Thanks for all the tips.

I've terminated the line and it's definately not the cable as I've swapped these ad nauseum.

I'm running them both on DMX mode 2, which I believe is 11 channels. And the fixture profile I'm using has 11 channels, and all seem to work fine..!! .. For the first one in the daisy chain..

what could be the matter?

Andrew

[LJ_krede.dk]

there is different types of mac250.. Can you tell which ones you have? (wash, +, Krypton, Entour etc)

the different types use different number of DMX channels. u have to be sure that the fixture you are using match the number of channels your type of mac250s require. otherwise the second mac will not work as you exspect

[bumclouds]

I'm not sure exactly what type of Mac250 they are, I might have to ring the guy who supplied them to us to find out. But they are reaaaallly old ones.

I wasn't aware they had internal jumpers, I will have a look at that.

I've tried putting the mac250's in different spots in the daisy chain, and oddly the same thing happens, the 2nd one won't respond.!!

[bumclouds]

okay well I finally got them both working.. and i cannot explain this at all!!

i could not get a single mac250 in isolation working at all without first inverting the input. once i did that, it worked fine. add one after it, and the 2nd one won't respond, inverter or no inverter.

when i put two in a row, i have to remove the phase inverters from the inputs of both mac250s in order to get them both to respond.

veryyyyy strange..

anyway, I got them both to respond.. i wrote programs for them..about 30 minutes before the club opens i notice the first mac is starting to make lots of noise as its turning around (lots of vibrations). i told my boss and he said, forget about it, keep using it

surely enough, 20 minutes later, it broke.. so now i just have one mac that works... lol.. so that solves my problem completely!! i have just one mac now...