coffee and control boards

[n0grv]

its been a crazy morning, our morning gal dumped a large mc donalds cup of coffee in our main arrakis board. she calls me and i told her to unplug it and I would be right in. I was so mad I was laughing cause mrs perfect had screwed up.

i quickly got the automation comp hooked to the optimod so we were on, at this time we cant switch our production room to air. this is the next project.
I took out all the moduals and sprayed them down with contact cleaner along with all the plugs and edge connectors in the board, put it all back together and powered it up. had several strange things going on. turned it off and put a hair drier on it. at this time its slowly getting all functions back.

I think I will email her a few links from ebay on arrakis boards, that should give her a heart attak. lol

[boiseengineer(old)]

You should re-wash everything down with distilled water since the contact cleaner won't remove water solubles like the sugars and dairy.

[n0grv]

we were lucky it was black coffee, after 3 hours with a hair drier after cleaning everything we only lost 1 modual, had a spare to move in that spot.


I may be looking for some spares soon, will post what the number on them is soon.

[chrish]

You should consider yourself very very lucky, a sneeze will destroy an Arrakis console. Years ago to make some extra pocket money I took care of a station in Concord, NH that had an Arrakis so troublesome that even the factory
could not repair the main frame mother board....the nightmare console of all time.

[NECRAT]

Could be ALOT worse...

Just ask WIYY in Baltimore, MD.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 238&type=3

[n0grv]

WOW - that board was fried.

we did get very lucky. I think what saved us is dj called me as soon as it happened and I told her to unplug it. In all it took about 8 hours to get it back on and we ended up loosing only 2 channel moduals.

I am now looking for some extra ones, the # on them is - TPM1 - for an arrakkis.
email kesm@kesmradio.com

Jeff

[RGORJANCE]

That series of console was reasonably rugged. I suspect you only have a chip, or two that went bad. You might think about getting a parts kit from either Arrakis, or one of their vendors and replace the chips one at a time until you find the bad ones in each module.

Typically, the more recent boards had higher mortality on the VCA chips for the fader modules than the older boards. The original manu. stopped making the chips, and the replacements aren't as good.

Fossil

[miklk1973]

Could be ALOT worse...

Just ask WIYY in Baltimore, MD.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 238&type=3

Better than pictures here is audio of the board frying itself.

http://youtu.be/Eo7G6GaIX7Y

[Bill DeFelice]

You and the owner should have thanked her as I think it was an omen. After blowing through several 1200 series Arrakis consoles and having a rather sour experience with an ARC-10 board I finally wised up and learned to never look back. The clue of discontinued VCA chips should have been yet another clue to cut your losses and find something else.

The old line "burn me once, shame on you - burn me twice (or more), shame on me!" comes to mind.

[RFBurns]

After several events of coffee, soft drink, water, and even a few other beverages that did not belong in the studio to begin with, I installed moisture sensors at key points where liquids could enter into the consoles, detect it and kill the power. Along with that, wrapping the modules in household plastic wrap to keep them nice and dry.

Saved a lot of headaches...and repair costs.

[BingNYEng]

Our studios have been food and drink free since 2002. In the last 10 years, I have never had to clean up a spill or vacuum crumbs out of a console. Jocks keep everything outside the studio doors, and we remind guests to do the same.

[RFBurns]

Our studios have been food and drink free since 2002. In the last 10 years, I have never had to clean up a spill or vacuum crumbs out of a console. Jocks keep everything outside the studio doors, and we remind guests to do the same.

That's one sure shotgun solution and works quite well...when everyone cooperates. Making sure such a policy is followed 24/7/365 is a task all on its own, far more than dealing with spilt milk in the mixer.

RFBurns

[rockmanac]

far more than dealing with spilt milk in the mixer.

The last station I worked at... Our morning TD spilled chocolate milk into the not quite 3 month old HD switcher.

[RFBurns]

The last station I worked at... Our morning TD spilled chocolate milk into the not quite 3 month old HD switcher.

ACK! Oh my there goes that warranty!

In 96 when chief engineer for KOSA Ch 7 in Odessa Texas, the whole ENG crews got brand spanking new Sony "Beta-SP" cameras (8 total). Everything was great for the first 8 months...until one of them decided that taking the camera in and out of it's protective case was a waste of time, left it at home and toted that camera around in the back of their vehicle so it would bounce and bang into anything else back there. And one day he had several jugs of RO water in the back too, along with the news ENG gear and guess what happened next.

{Sony Beta-Cam sings} Splish splash I got me a bath...all on a Saturday night...rub dub as the engineer scrubs...trying to bring me to life....

Oh the pains to see things like that happen..or brought in to the shop when no one is around..finding it there on the bench with no notes, no what happened explanations..just the inventory identification tag linking the culprit to the disaster.

Accidents can happen anywhere anytime though. Those are excusable. It's the neglected on purpose ones that drove me insane.

RFBurns

[Kent T]

Arrakis- where you get crosstalk, inputs which come on by themselves, and more glitches than you can shake a stick at. Run an Arrakis in a RFI field, and your blood pressure gets raised. Prefer gear I swear by instead of at. Funny thing, I replaced one with an old Gates Stereo Statesman with Op Amp Labs parts. Bad when an Arrakis gets replaced by an ancient Gates Snowplow!