So there I am minding my own business having just shut down the lighitng desk in a hurry to get to the bar durign Panto on Sunday evening. I realise that I've forgotten to take all the dimmers down to zero (duh) so I switch on the desk - but there's nothing!!! No power what so ever.
I check all the usual suspects and there's power to the desk - bugger!!!! Lift up the lid (It's a Strand 520i) nothing amiss - time to phone a friend - who in this case happens to be the Hire company Viking Stage Lighting. I have to make a couple of calls (it is 11pm by now) but Ian Lenord confirms my diagnosis that it's the boards power supply that's gone down.
At this point you should be aware I'm in Godalming - he's 3-4 hrs away in Norwich I have a 2:30 matinee and my show is saved on the desk hard drive and not on a floppy oh and because there's 14 moving lights in the rig a reprogramme on another desk isn't a 5 minute job
At 09:00 Monday morning I get a phone call to say he's 30 mins away (Damn him - that was my lie in gone) he arrived with new desk, spare PSU and laptop in case we had to recover data from the hard drive 1 hour later (we'd had coffee) we were back up right as rain
What Brilliant sevice. A BIG UP to Viking Stage lighting - and too all you other hire companies out there which promise similar service but don't deliver TAKE NOTE!!!
A couple of little points to note if all had really gone wrong I could have borrowed another 520 from a theatre or friend around here and swapped the drives over
Also in 5 years of using this desk - probably 50 shows plus I've never had a problem with it.
All the same it's good to know you have cast iron backup when you need it Well done again Viking!
Full Version: Things you really don't need......
Ah yes, the sinking feeling when you realise that this isn't going to be something you can fix yourself.
But fair play to them, that really is cracking service. Bet you're going to make backups of the show on floppy from now on though, aren't you?
But fair play to them, that really is cracking service. Bet you're going to make backups of the show on floppy from now on though, aren't you?
QUOTE (Martin @ Jan 4 2006, 01:03 AM) 
So there I am minding my own business having just shut down the lighitng desk in a hurry to get to the bar durign Panto on Sunday evening. I realise that I've forgotten to take all the dimmers down to zero (duh) so I switch on the desk - but there's nothing!!! No power what so ever.
I check all the usual suspects and there's power to the desk - bugger!!!! Lift up the lid (It's a Strand 520i) nothing amiss - time to phone a friend - who in this case happens to be the Hire company Viking Stage Lighting. I have to make a couple of calls (it is 11pm by now) but Ian Lenord confirms my diagnosis that it's the boards power supply that's gone down.
At this point you should be aware I'm in Godalming - he's 3-4 hrs away in Norwich I have a 2:30 matinee and my show is saved on the desk hard drive and not on a floppy oh and because there's 14 moving lights in the rig a reprogramme on another desk isn't a 5 minute job
At 09:00 Monday morning I get a phone call to say he's 30 mins away (Damn him - that was my lie in gone) he arrived with new desk, spare PSU and laptop in case we had to recover data from the hard drive 1 hour later (we'd had coffee) we were back up right as rain
What Brilliant sevice. A BIG UP to Viking Stage lighting - and too all you other hire companies out there which promise similar service but don't deliver TAKE NOTE!!!
A couple of little points to note if all had really gone wrong I could have borrowed another 520 from a theatre or friend around here and swapped the drives over
Also in 5 years of using this desk - probably 50 shows plus I've never had a problem with it.
All the same it's good to know you have cast iron backup when you need it Well done again Viking!
I check all the usual suspects and there's power to the desk - bugger!!!! Lift up the lid (It's a Strand 520i) nothing amiss - time to phone a friend - who in this case happens to be the Hire company Viking Stage Lighting. I have to make a couple of calls (it is 11pm by now) but Ian Lenord confirms my diagnosis that it's the boards power supply that's gone down.
At this point you should be aware I'm in Godalming - he's 3-4 hrs away in Norwich I have a 2:30 matinee and my show is saved on the desk hard drive and not on a floppy oh and because there's 14 moving lights in the rig a reprogramme on another desk isn't a 5 minute job
At 09:00 Monday morning I get a phone call to say he's 30 mins away (Damn him - that was my lie in gone) he arrived with new desk, spare PSU and laptop in case we had to recover data from the hard drive 1 hour later (we'd had coffee) we were back up right as rain
What Brilliant sevice. A BIG UP to Viking Stage lighting - and too all you other hire companies out there which promise similar service but don't deliver TAKE NOTE!!!
A couple of little points to note if all had really gone wrong I could have borrowed another 520 from a theatre or friend around here and swapped the drives over
Also in 5 years of using this desk - probably 50 shows plus I've never had a problem with it.
All the same it's good to know you have cast iron backup when you need it Well done again Viking!
Martin as a fellow moderator and also someone now on the Viking mailing list, your post is verging on publicising Viking......oops, I just did as well!
QUOTE (pritch @ Jan 4 2006, 10:40 PM)
Bet you're going to make backups of the show on floppy from now on though, aren't you?
You'd think so wouldn't you - but probably not - It's such a pain to change the save directory on the Strand and floooies aren't that good. Normally I use desks that are networked so not a problem. The nice thing about a 500/300 is that the show is saved in a non volitile memory that has about 30 days life without power and the HDD is standard PC - so either way you can ge the show back unless you've done something really silly.
I only use a floppy for uploading my personal setting before I start programming - They are kept safe on two different PC's which I re copy to floppy each time before use and just to be certain I have the file saved on 2 hotmail accounts, a yahoo account and a gmail account so if everything goes up in flames I can retrieve it from somewhere (the same goes for my outlook contacts too) There's 6 years of work on those files (group set ups for moving light gobos, colours etc) so I dont' want to lose them!
Just gone midnight and I'm back in from tonights Panto dress rehearsal and thank God the Lighting designer returned from a week in France tonight, with an hour to go, I've had a rehearsal and a tech with the Fat Frog which I've yet to tame! but it too is on hire from VIKING Lighting and they were very helpful producing patching cables within 24 hours when our old Pulsar 8 pins did a double take from the Strand Zero 88 demux. Can't recommend then enough, and Martin T for his Chridtmas Eve visit and guidance. I'm off to sleep now for the first time in a week knowing that the show will be fine. Oh and one final note (off thread I know) We have a Pqanto at last that will come down by 10 O'clock!!! pays to write it in house!
I know advertising isn't allowed, but when you are a regular poster and recieve good service, we all want to know about that. Sounds like they did you proud
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