Reviving a DTS XD20

[Ryan Gallagher]

Finally moving my side-quest with my ebay XD20 to a separate thread.

First hijack conversations over here:
https://www.film-tech.com/vbb/forum/...0084#post50084

I think I've got an iffy Motherboard at this stage. I did not have an alternate VGA monitor at home to try but I dug out a Fulsome ImagePro 3g and it sees no video signal on boot from the mobo vga port.

Have swapped CMOS battery and reset CMOS etc.

I've got some 4 wire PC buzzers on the way, to check for post codes. But probably looking to replace this ASUS PG5GC-VM mobo if no progress via error codes. If I had an alternate Mini ATX board lying around I'd try that, but will probably be an identical swap from Ebay if I can find one people aren't gouging for due to vintage.

Today I tore it down further to look for anything else weird. Upon removing the DTS PCI card found that the ribbon cable that connects it to the bottom main automation/projector basement board was also flopping around in the breeze. But that didn't change post issues.

Note the front panel LCD/buttons are a USB client device (spotted in the tear down), it boots into it's own "DTS Loader 1.1" and waits for the "host connection" to establish to the main PC. So the fact I was seeing "boot like" activity on the front panel screen was a red herring I think.

I did have it booted into a filesystem check that one time initially after identifying the compact flash module was unseated (in shipping?), but that was before I knew the power button was wired to the Mobo power switch. When I thought that fs check was taking longer than it should (8 hours), I just hard reset it by pulling power instead of holding the power for 5+ seconds, there is a very good chance I created the problem I now have when I did that. In hindsite THAT was the moment where I should have dug out the monitor and keyboard, to check if it was still actually "working" or frozen.

Assuming I can get it posting again with access to the bios, it should be pretty easy from there. Software install is the same as the XD10, preserving the more feature-full licenses that might be on this unit will depend on if the original CF and HDD are still good.

Edit: the HDD appears good, cause I was able to mount and read from from it on a separate machine. Might have bad sectors etc but it at least functions. Have not tried that with the CF module yet, which judging by the HDD contents, only hosts the boot partition and image?

[Marco Giustini]

That's a regular, vintage, motherboard.

Take it out of the case and test it by itself. No cards, just CPU and RAM. It should POST (count RAM, check HDDs etc). Only when you get to that point, shall you continue and attach more things to the board.

Boards are not interchangeable. DTS uses a specific (OLD!) version of Linux and while a random board might work, I'm sure that DTS optimised the software for what the board was offering. So I wouldn't get a different one.

Remember the POST screen runs at 70Hz, some monitors might be unhappy with it. Also you can check the PSU voltages.

And yes, the LCD is just a USB thingy, ignore it. ?

If still no POST after removing the board, re-seat the RAM (multiple times) and re-seat the CPU.

More than the beeper, I'd had purchased a "post card analyser" which also comes with a beeper! But it's ok.
Good luck!

Oh, are you sure you're plugging the monitor into the MOTHERBOARD VGA output and not on one of the DTS cards, assuming there is one?

[Ryan Gallagher]

That's a regular, vintage, motherboard.

Take it out of the case and test it by itself. No cards, just CPU and RAM. It should POST (count RAM, check HDDs etc). Only when you get to that point, shall you continue and attach more things to the board.

Boards are not interchangeable. DTS uses a specific (OLD!) version of Linux and while a random board might work, I'm sure that DTS optimised the software for what the board was offering. So I wouldn't get a different one.

Remember the POST screen runs at 70Hz, some monitors might be unhappy with it. Also you can check the PSU voltages.

And yes, the LCD is just a USB thingy, ignore it. ?

If still no POST after removing the board, re-seat the RAM (multiple times) and re-seat the CPU.

More than the beeper, I'd had purchased a "post card analyser" which also comes with a beeper! But it's ok.
Good luck!

Oh, are you sure you're plugging the monitor into the MOTHERBOARD VGA output and not on one of the DTS cards, assuming there is one?

Thanks Marco. Believe it or not I did try most of those things before arriving to thinking I need to check post codes and/or bad Mobo, including reseating ram and CPU (paste was still liquid and not all dried out). I don't have any alternative DDR2 to try at home (shockingly I still have DDR1 lying around). But having grown up building machines of this gen and earlier, pretty confident post codes is my next logical thing to check.

Current status is no post or no vga video, and will not know more until I get post codes. All I know is the power-on LED on the Mobo works and cpu and chassis fan spin. Normally one could pull ram to get a predictable post code failure, but no buzzer here yet to confirm.

I did meter the PSU voltages after shorting the power on pins due to your prompting, all good there both on the EATX multi and ATX12v

[Marco Giustini]

Good start.
Then yes, removing the ram to see if you get beeps is a good start. ?

[Ryan Gallagher]

Good start.
Then yes, removing the ram to see if you get beeps is a good start. ?

Well. With buzzer installed:

With CPU and RAM only outside the chassis: no post beeps, no keyboard lights, no video. (AMI Bios "should" have at least one short beep on normal boot).
With RAM removed: 1 long and 2 short (graphics circuitry error).

Same behavior no matter which ram slot is utilized with this 512mb "Super Talent" brand DRAM.

Ram is cheaper than a Mobo, will order some DDR2 4200 first and try that. I don't recall if this generation of graphics chipset would have required good ram to make it past post.

[Marco Giustini]

"Super Talent" ? DTS always used high quality stuff!

You could try with a VGA card, PCI ones should be inexpensive. I recommend the post-analyser card too, they'll give you a post code. They can be useless and misleading though ?

[Ryan Gallagher]

"Super Talent" ? DTS always used high quality stuff!

You could try with a VGA card, PCI ones should be inexpensive. I recommend the post-analyser card too, they'll give you a post code. They can be useless and misleading though ?

I did have a PCI video card lying around, no change with it, same two results with and without ram. We’ll see what alternate ram changes. Mobo is at least not “completely dead”.

i’ll also bring the vga monitor home from work that was known good with an old AMI bios (DTS XD10) when I did its upgrades.

[Marco Giustini]

Some old boards would require a charged battery to power up - maybe that's not your case but worth a try. Also you can try resetting the BIOS?

[Ryan Gallagher]

Some old boards would require a charged battery to power up - maybe that's not your case but worth a try. Also you can try resetting the BIOS?

Yeah fresh battery and bios reset was one of the first things I did. Old battery was still metering good though too.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Progress! (err Victory?) New ram solved the boot/video issue. Setup the bios with what I assume would be close to correct for this machine.

Minor glitch that I didn't disable quick boot and couldn't get into bios a second time, reset CMOS again and do-over, now I can mash DEL and get there if I need to.

Got her re-assembled and made sure she booted between each component reinstall, and upon final assembly, and after a lot of complaining during the file systems checks, she did a bootfs recovery from backup... and almost booted completely on the next cycle.

Got to an actual DTS hardware error:
H222 Board Diagnostics Fail
CM: H222 Shows Video Card Connection, but no card found.
(and reported a bunch of voltages that seem fine).

I don't trust this HDD due to how many FS errors it found, and seek errors too while checking it seemed. But the H222 reporting about video board errors seem to be a separate issue. Unless something in my bios settings are tripping this up.

---

Right after composing this, I clicked the "right arrow" on that error screen wondering if it would scroll to show me the rest of the message, but instead it acknowledged the error and continued to boot!

It booted completely and all other functions appear normal, unless you go into the ACV or video menus where it complains about the missing video device. It has all licenses except ACV. CSS test patterns even worked going to my VGA monitor (after I changed the projector config to one that was likely to be 1920x1080... before that it was drawing pink where there should be black). Fired off a test audio and the "audio" LED lights up... nothing plugged into the outputs at home of course.

At least I know if I decide to try a clean install, this flash module and HDD can be set aside as at least "bootable". But version wise it is on the latest. 2.2.06 (Dec 8 2010).

It also does behave like if you threw a second drive in it would auto rebuild raid volumes to it, all the file systems it checked were md raid1 devices, and there is a Raid entry in the setup menus where it reports 2nd drive is missing (though I don't think this unit ever actually had one... no residual hotglue on a second SATA port

Good times. Don't need the video features anyway if it goes to my venue as a backup. But am curious to sort that if possible. I wonder if it wants a different video card order in the bios? The DTS card is "kinda" a generic PCI video card.

[Ryan Gallagher]

And a little easter egg for you Marco: They improved their power down since the XD10s. A short press of the power button requests a shutdown and waits for you to confirm.

IMG_6389.jpg

Then Tux makes an appearance with a friendly reminder for the cinema operator! They know how to pull on my heart strings.

IMG_6390.jpg

But Tux does know he is a penguin right? ;-)

From confirm to off is about 5 seconds... so I assume a clean shutdown. VGA console is overtaken for CSS output, so can't confirm with console messages, but you briefly see an empty xserver screen before it powers off.

[Marco Giustini]

ahhh amazing, thanks for sharing!

I've had so many of those old boards refusing to work because of RAM issues - but many times it was just the contacts. You have probably tried this already but if you want to experiment, try with some "lubricated" contact cleaner. De-oxit should work.

In any case, happy days! I like how the XD20 shares the same XD10 installation file but it looks a much more polished machine.

Have you got a picture of the H222? I'd also be curious to see the cards under the motherboard, if you ever get to them.

[Ryan Gallagher]

ahhh amazing, thanks for sharing!

I've had so many of those old boards refusing to work because of RAM issues - but many times it was just the contacts. You have probably tried this already but if you want to experiment, try with some "lubricated" contact cleaner. De-oxit should work.

In any case, happy days! I like how the XD20 shares the same XD10 installation file but it looks a much more polished machine.

Have you got a picture of the H222? I'd also be curious to see the cards under the motherboard, if you ever get to them.

I did end up with a spare mobo on the way too, cause a ebayer accepted my low ball offer concurrent to my ram purchase. I’ll know for sure if the original ram is bad then. It’s been open on my desk long enough I should probably air dust everywhere before closing it up, so I’ll snag that bottom board photo eventually. Still gotta try new storage and see if I can get the installer booting off a donor optical drive. Bios does not act like it will boot from USB (or a usb optical), but will try.

There is also the issue that if this were to become a usable backup, I need to sort out content loading from optical disc cause I lack the drive unit accessory, or learn how to offload those DTS files to usb. Our old DVDRW in the booth refuses to read DTS discs as data. Have not tried my modern drive yet. Not all prints arrive with usb DTS files.

[Marco Giustini]

on my XD10, you just need to copy the files you find in the CDs in a /DTS folder on a USB stick. If the player won't like it, try another stick.
It seems that the player is only looking into a DTS folder though

The DTS motherboard will likely have a "custom" BIOS but I doubt it's much "custom", it probably just have custom defaults - such as boot from CDROM first ETC. The idea is that if you lose the battery, the player won't behave differently.

There are tools to extract a BIOS - though they can go wrong. If you know someone with a programmer, that's the best bet ?

I think a USB CDROM might be seen by the motherboard, you need to power up with that connected. In the end the XD20 had a USB drive only and the software comes on CD so I'd imagine the board should be able to boot from a USB CD. Unless they did some software wizardry with Linux.

[Ryan Gallagher]

on my XD10, you just need to copy the files you find in the CDs in a /DTS folder on a USB stick. If the player won't like it, try another stick.
It seems that the player is only looking into a DTS folder though

The DTS motherboard will likely have a "custom" BIOS but I doubt it's much "custom", it probably just have custom defaults - such as boot from CDROM first ETC. The idea is that if you lose the battery, the player won't behave differently.

There are tools to extract a BIOS - though they can go wrong. If you know someone with a programmer, that's the best bet ?

I think a USB CDROM might be seen by the motherboard, you need to power up with that connected. In the end the XD20 had a USB drive only and the software comes on CD so I'd imagine the board should be able to boot from a USB CD. Unless they did some software wizardry with Linux.

It must have been an issue with the laptop DVDRW we had in the booth. Cause the newer USB portable one reads DTS trailer discs just fine and exposes the DTS folders for copying, so might only need the optical drive for reinstall.

Noted on the potential for custom bios defaults. I can probably compare what the reset state looks like on this board to the other incoming motherboard to spot any differences DTS/Datasat might have attempted to program as preferred defaults. If I want this spare Mobo to become a backup I'll have to consider crossing that bridge later if I find a difference.

BTW the XD20 did have optical drives, they were just housed in an optional 1U rack unit. You can even set one of the 4 user buttons to be the eject command. Interface wise it is almost the same, except the addition of those programmable user buttons, that really just give you shortcuts into various menu areas, or can be made to display certain status fields.