Brian

It's possible but I'd expect the desk to stay not working if the battery was duff. When you say it 'resets' what exactly happens? Do all the lights go out? It sounds more like a loose connection on the power side to me.

Hmm, very strange. Even if the cable was too capacitive, at 3.5m long it shouldn't make that much difference.

Just checking but as well as testing that pin 1 is connected to pin 1, 2 to 2 and 3 to 3 have you tested for shorts between pins?

You've got an earth loop (which I think you knew). You are on the right track with the 47 Ohm resisotr but I think you need to go further. You must break the earth between the PC and the audio system. I'm guessing the outputs from the PC are unbalanced; I'd take them into a balanced input on the mixer, the signal line from the PC into the 'hot, the 'earth' from the PC into the cold, leave the ground of the audio input disconnected. Or, use a DI box to feed the PC into the mixer.

Nice idea but who is going to be on the other end of it to answer the questions? I'm sure the guys in the Support department have got better things to do than sit around waiting for a 'chat'. And don't forget that Zero sell all over the world; should they man it 24/7?

Thanks Paul I think you might be right about the keyboard needing to support both USB and PS2. I've found 2 sorts of adaptors - one type allow you to connect a PS2 keyboard to a USB port, these seem to cost around £15+ and emulate a USB HID device which then connects to the keyboard. The others are, as you say often green, and connect a 'USB' keyboard to a PS2 port and seem to cost about £3 - I bet they isn't any electronics in them at that price - they must rely on the keyboard being clever. Problem is the keyboard I want to use is most definitely only USB.

Is anyone running a USB keyboard via a USB to PS2 adaptor on a Frog range desk?

Do you have the desk in front of you? I'd never seen one until a few weeks ago and playing with it, within half-an-hour, I was able to get chases running, control movers and set static scenes. It has a different way of operating to normal theatre or live desks but that's how it is designed. It really is quite easy to use.

It's the same manual for all the Frog range except the Mambo. It shouldn't be that confusing; the way it's written all the bits that a basic Frog doesn't have are in their own sections with a few small exceptions. Download yourself an up-to-date copy from the website and print it off and, while you are there, get a copy of Phantom Frog. You can then practice using the desk without having to sit in front of the real thing.

You can label them with the keyboard and they will show on the SX screen.

Hi Peter On the SX buttons you can set how the LTP channels respond on an attribute basis - either SNAP or FADE for each of colour, beamshape and position. The time is set with the LTP Fade setting.

On power up the ADC measures a number of internal voltages... 1. The output of the DAC 2. The battery 3. The ADC reference voltage 4. The 0v line The ADC reference voltage should give a reading of full scale and the 0v line of '0'. Given all your channels come on and stay on it tells us that something in the ADC circuitry is wrong, it's always reading full scale. Options are the ADC itself ( IC39 ZN439 ) and its reference feeds or the analogue multiplexers and their control logic. All the analogue lines are fed to 8 4051 analogue multiplexers on the main board (ic2,ic3,ic11,ic12,ic16,ic17,ic22,ic23) which feed the adc. A quick test would be to check the reference to the ADC - pin 11 on ic39 should be 2.55volts dc. If it's not check pin 10, that should be the same. Further tests will probably need a 'scope to check out control signals.

Has the desk had a drink recently? My XL did odd things after it had a taste of beer until I stripped it down and gave it a good wash.

Hi I assume we're talking Frog range here? When you say 'wouldn't work' what do you mean? Was the scanner doing something before you brought in Submaster 2? Remember that the movement/colour/gobo channels on scanners etc are all LTP channels; they respond to the last change. It sound like the desk is in 'Full' mode which means all fixture channels are recorded. Have a look in the manual for 'Partial' mode or search this site for the same word.

I take the point on keeping it simple. The copy feature as outlined would certainly achieve the same thing.

Hi Sebastian, thanks for the welcome. Yes, I also spend far too much time on the Blue Room (and the ABTT and the ASP). Brian

Thanks sp, I'd seen the topic you linked to but thought that what I was suggesting was slightly different. I can see what you wanted to achieve but can also see how , from a software and operation point of view, it's a tricky thing to do.

I do a lot of live, very busked, shows. It's partly the way I work on the Frog I've been using up to now but I usually end up with a load of submasters programmed up with a load of different looks and soon end up very confused as to what I've got where and what is overlayed with what. Now, with my shiny new Mambo sitting on the table downstairs I haven't had a chance to gig it yet but a thought struck me... With two physical banks of submasters to play with it would be nice to be able to 'lock' the page of one set of submasters whilst the others continue to be affected by the page select buttons. The trade off would be the loss of half your submaster memories but with 480 to play with I don't see that as a huge problem. So on the Mambo you'd lock the bottom bank to subs 13-24 and put your generic, 'always to hand' looks there leaving the top bank where you can still change pages. To make it more general to the range you could lock the right hand section of 6 faders on the Frog/Fat/Leap.

Wow, thanks for the swift reply. This forum, and the support in it from Zero88, was one of the factors which influenced my choice of desk.

My first post having joined the legion of Frog owners; a Mambo to be precise. It appears that I can name just about anything on the desk other than fixtures. I've RTFM but am still none the wiser which makes me think that you can't? With 96 of them on the Mambo to keep track of I need something other than a pad of paper