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Hi there, I´m having issues with a Kinoton FP38 EC, the main CPU is crashing almost once a day... anyone knows somebody that may have one board for sale? PEC80-01+02 cheers!
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Are you noticing any power issues? (Flickering/dimming lights, etc. Digital clocks needing to be reset?)
You say "almost once a day". How long has this been going on? Is it roughly the same time each day? Did it just start happening suddenly? is there any construction going on in your building or area around you?
You might not have an issue with the projector's board. Speaking of which, what do you mean by "crashing"? Projector just stops, won't run, runs erratically, starts (or stops) on it's own, etc. Be specific.
I would start by checking (Have an electrician or technician do this) ALL of the power connections to the projector, including any circuit breakers/fuses, feeds to panels or even the feed to your building. Ask your power provider if they have been doing any work on your power grid in the area, around the time of the issues you are having.
Some detective work on your part can save you from spending a lot of money for nothing.
The Kinoton FP ECs are pretty solid machines, not overly prone to throwing fits, so more info and some preliminary checks as I suggested would be the way to start before throwing a ton of money at a new CPU board. -
I have an FP38 EC, and it's a great machine.
As Tony asks, what do you mean by crashing? Is it showing an error code on the display? Something else?
There are only a couple of places that ever stocked parts for these machines, and they are running out of what little stock they had (if they haven't dumped them all already). Bell Theatre Services in the UK, and Boston Light and Sound in the US. I've bought parts for mine from both of these companies, but be prepared to pay a lot!Comment
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Thanks for your comments.
This FP38EC started failing several months ago. In the middle of a show, the projector stopped and the display showed F06 error. Power cycled and continued.
It started to happen more and more frequently, and many times power cycling didn´t solve it.
Our first guess was the power, so we installed a UPS system, but didn´t help-
As F06 is related to accesories like frictions and sound reader, we checked them all, they were ok.
We noticed the interface has 8 red error leds to indicate wich one causes the failure, but those never lit during the failure.
Decided to "cheat" the interface board forcing its output to "no error", and the failure happened anyway (don´t recall if it was zero or +V).
The error is definetly triggered but the CPU board (hauptrechner).
It always happens between 40 to 80 minutes after powered. It even failed on stand by!
Tonys post may be a good clue. The customer was recently performing electrical tests, as the are having an issue on one Barco DP2K-20C... while playing HDMI content, the screen goes black suddenly, apparently related to some house lights variation... maybe the dimmer causing harmonics on the AC lines? grounding problems?
Strange the UPS didn´t solve an AC problem... its a double conversion one, so it should isolate the AC problems...
Its a good hint. Will ask them to recheck all the AC and grounding...
Thanks for your help!Comment
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Hello Alex,
can you tell us, from wich year your fp is?
there are several changes in the electrical systems over the years and models. the EC also have different parts inside than the EC II.
i have one of the first EC machine at home, the first one with the digital delay for the 16mm soundhead, it came from a sound production facility in Dortmund and had similar iussues which where caused by a bad capacitor in the main voltage unit. Every 20 seconds, the machine had a light "hickup", you saw it the best when it was jogging the reel to a certain point, the speed dropped from 200 f/s down to 190 f/s and vice versa.
These "mega caps" are in the lowest stage of the projector, behind the shield of the pcu, ca. where the 230 v plug is.
At Arri where i worked years ago, we had 5 of them and all where very sensible for bad frequencies in the powerlines. Do you use any pcl connections where the machine is in use?
Greets from Germany
Christian
@David Ferguson - you know my machine from a facebook-post some months ago (not under my real name there for reasons)
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Hallo Christian, guten morgen! wie gehts?
I have no idea of the year of this projector, we bought it used 10 years ago or so... Serial number is 158, si I assume its pretty old.
The phisical manual is different as the one on PDF and includes several schematics drawn by hand... I guess its one of the old ones...
Regards from Argentina!Comment
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Hola Alex, como estas?
Es geht mir gut, vielen Dank, ich hoffe Dir geht es auch gut
From the serial number it is one of the first machines around 1989 - 1992 (mine is no. 162 and from 1991, it was installed 1992 at the "Ruhr Sound Studios" in Dortmund.
There could be some similarities in the behaviour - especially in stopping and pulling the codes. Check the big capacitors first and change them if the values different from each others, then check the small ones on the cpu card and the friction card. These cards are all in the "europakarte" formfactor, which is simple to measure and easy for swapping out components. The EC series was built with out of the shelf electronic components from that era, most of them are still availible.
Does your Handbook has the big "electronic check up" section in it?
Greets, ChristianComment
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I love that this thread has brought all the EC owners together. Nice to know there are a few of us our there! For interest, mine is an FP38EC, and while I don't have the serial number, I know it is pre-RSSD, but post-Dolby Digital as it came with the Dolby cat 700 mounted on it.
Are you looking at the manual for the EC, or the ECII? I didn't have the EC manual until recently, and while the general concepts are the same, and many schematics are, the motor control and motor itself is different.
@Christian Anner - I am jealous of your machine with the RSSD - I am still looking for the studio RSSD for my machine!Comment
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The old Manual from the EC series can be found here: https://elektrotanya.com/kinoton_fp3.../download.html
when im back home ill do some videos and put a link here if thats ok.
in theory you can put every rssd-reader on the machine, you´ll have to thread the film not into it while shuffling. the first rssd readers for studio-use just flipped away the pressure roll from the sounddrum, so the film slips onto it (not good) the second generation uses a coupling between the flywheel and the shaft so that the sounddrum was free to spin whithout any inertia, these units where on the ec II machines and are now very hard to find, even in germany...
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OZ_JBcvJpGgLast edited by Christian Anner; 08-05-2025, 06:59 AM.Comment
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Thanks to you I was aware of the two variants of the studio RSSD - and fingers crossed I'll find (or make) one someday.
Not to derail this thread, but I'm curious to the colouring of your EC - the shutter housing isn't the dark grey that I'm used to on the studio machines. Is this a replacement part, or is yours different? I remember you saying that you had a prototype at one point, but it doesn't exist any more and you didn't have any photos (sadly).Comment
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this machine is technically the prototype of the ec series, the only difference is the 16mm soundreproducer: the 1st machine had it under the shutter housing, this one had it replaced on site for the newer style. the coloring also is the same. The lamphouse is the grey studio one whith the yellowish sidepanels. i misspelled the serialnumber its not 162, its 126, they started the series with according to the books (they can be found in the 3-F Museum at Deidesheim)Originally posted by David Ferguson View PostComment
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