DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Discuss older Nikon-based Kodak digital SLRs, including DCS 100, DCS 200, NC2000, DCS 400/600/700-series, etc. Ask questions, post general comments, anecdotes, reviews and user tips.
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU SCSI termination problem?

Post by NikonWeb »

Stan Disbrow wrote:Anyway, I think all you need to do is pick up a Mac SCSI terminator and plug it in between the DSU and the SCSI cable.
That simple?! Wonderful news!

Any suggestions for a good online source? A quick eBay search didn't come up with anything (or maybe I was just using the wrong terms).

You're right - the DSU requires a 25 pin DB25 male plug (i.e. there's a female connector on the DSU).

UPDATE: I've found and ordered a terminator, listed on eBay as "DB25 SCSI External Terminator DB 25Pin". According to Stan, it's the right kind. Hopefully, this $7.95 piece of hardware will make my DCS kit fully operational. With a bit of luck I'll soon be able to share some DCS 100 photos. Stay tuned!

Jarle
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DSU/SCSI nightmare – I give up

Post by NikonWeb »

SCSI terminator arrived in the mail today. Didn't work. Still no DSU listed in the SCSI Select Utility.

I give up. There are simply too many unknowns and potential problems to deal with: Incompatible SCSI card, incompatible/bad SCSI cable, incompatible/bad terminator, DSU hardware problems, etc.

(But I'm still interested in hearing from someone with a working setup)

Jarle
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by nik0web »

Jarle

One of the problems your having is that the device your attempting to detect, the harddrive, in the DSU isn't spinning up. If you power on the DSU and immediatly run the detect software or boot your system the drive will be powered up by the DSU. The answer to this problem lies in your post of Oct 27, 2008. Look at the bottom picture in the post. The next to last item on the list is "Send Start Unit Command". That command will spin up the drive and allow it to be consistently detected. You need to change the setting for that controller.

Also you have to remember that your configuration is a SCSI controller on both ends of the same SCSI interface. That's a completely legal configuration. But you must have a different address for the two SCSI controllers. Since you can't, or shouldn't change the address of the DSU you must be sure of what the address of the DSU is, and make your SCSI controllers address different.

From my SCSI experience any SCSI harddrive will be compatible with any SCSI controller. I've used drives as old as the old shoe box drives with a controller as recent as an Adaptec 29160n. I've also used the same card you are using.

Good luck, I hope you get this project running.
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by NikonWeb »

nik0web wrote:The next to last item on the list is "Send Start Unit Command". That command will spin up the drive and allow it to be consistently detected. You need to change the setting for that controller.
Thanks John,

Actually, you can easily change the DSU SCSI ID. I think I've unsuccessfully tried all the different ID's (although it shouldn't matter which one you're using, as long as it's a unique one). I'm pretty sure I've also tried enabling the "Send Start Unit Command", but I'll test this one more time. I'll keep you posted.

Jarle
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by nik0web »

My SCSI card drivers are:

The Windows 2000 SCSI driver for an Adaptec 29160n is adpu160m.sys

The Windows 98 (2nd) SCSI driver for an Adaptec AHA2940 is AIC78XX.mpd

Also, this may be obvious but to spell it out. You could have a harddrive in:

A) Your system
B) In an external drive bay
C) In another System

Your DSU will look like the (C) choice. But in all these cases the power needs to be on in the location that provides the power to the 4 pin plug to the HDD. In this case the DSU.

Also
The DSU is providing the resources of a SCSI controller card in another system.

Hope that helps.

John
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umrüd
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by umrüd »

Hello,

does anybody know, what voltage output the AC-Adapter of the DSU have? 16 Volt at the big plug and what about on the four little plugs?
Greetings
Ulrich
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by nik0web »

I checked the output on my DCS 100 Power brick. If you look at the plug the shell is tapered with one side larger. Referencing the picture at the top of this thread, pins 1,2,and 3 have 16.7v DC. There's no voltage on the big center pin, nor on pin 4 the pin at the left of the narrow sided edge of the shell, as you look at the the plug from the power brick.

My unit has a note that it was adjusted to 16.5v DC. Maybe that was with a load, or it has drifted??
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by nik0web »

I should have added that the power brick seems to make my DSU work, at least as far as I tried it....No camera
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umrüd
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by umrüd »

Thanks,

i wonderes why the fourth plug have no voltage, but it wasn`t connected. But this seems to be normal, when all plugs work in this way.

Greetings
Ulrich
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by Stan Disbrow »

Hi,

That power connector was a standard D shell at one time. It was not something Kodak had made special for their use as a power connector. They must not have needed four pins for the postive current, only three, so only used three. The nominal voltage specified on a supply is measured at the rated current, so they read a little high with no load.

The power supply itself was made by a company which specialized in that style of power supply. IBM used trainloads from them, with IBM brand labels on them of course. Many of the later Kodak cameras had bricks from the same supplier but with Kodak on the labels. For the 100, quantities obviously were too low to bother to make Kodak labels. They are good supplies. If they start giving trouble, the usual culprit is the filter capacitors. They give up the ghost eventually, say after 30 years. The caps are easily replaced, though.

Stan
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umrüd
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DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by umrüd »

Thanks for the information about power supply. Now next impediment is: DSU works, hard disk works, pictures on the monitor, but after a while monitor shut down and LCD shows "rom error".
Sometimes appears "camera not connected" sometimes one can change the ISO, but camera never powers up nor show anything on camera finder lcd-panel.
Any suggestions about that? How to prove the winder-unit or power connection from DSU to Winder?

Thanks in advance!!!
Greetings Ulrich
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by Stan Disbrow »

Hi,

The errors may be as simple as plug in connection issues. The ROMs I would expect to be in sockets. The connection between the pins on the ROM chips and the female socket pins are known to have issues after about 20 years. One solution is to pop out the ROMs and reinsert (one at a time so you don't get them out of order). You can still find the proper tools for doing this fairly easily.

There may be a worse issue, though. There are quite a lot of capacitors inside the older electronics. They go slowly bad with age. From the 1980s era, this becomes a source of odd actions after 30 years. The solution there is to replace all the bad capacitors. Finding them requires the use of at least an oscilloscope and knowledge of the circuits. Meaning at least a schematic and layout for every board inside. Alternatively, one can 'shotgun' by replacing every cap in there. This means having experience with electronics from whichever era we are talking about.

I just rejuvinated some tube-based radio equipment from the early 1960s using the shotgun approach to the caps. This, even though I have proper documentation and test equipment. I know with it being that old to not waste time figuring out that 95% of the caps are, indeed, faulty. :P

These old 100 models are reaching the point of when they fail, one just shelves the thing as obsolete electronics.....

Stan
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by nik0web »

Stan

What do you think a DCS 100 DSU would cost to buy that was refurbed as you suggest; this one and maybe all of them need. To replace all the capacitors, reseat all the ROM chips and to replace the Lithium battery that is always dead on these. And then to test it.

I used to work on the Univac III (1962) that had problems with the contacts between the motherboard (back board they called it) and the PC Boards. Well on the last 50 systems built. There was a max of 4 transistors on a card, so two flip flops. There were 8 rows of 88 cards 704 cards max. I think there was a couple blank spaces so about 700 cards.

There was a lot of duplication of cards most of the flip flop cards were PF1a cards, PF for pulse former. But we weren't allowed to swap cards. We had to scope every problem and once a half level signal was found, we could pull the card and replace the transistor. Your talking hours, shifts and days of work for every problem. If you swapped two identical cards you took the chance of creating another seating problem maybe now three problems instead of the one you started with.

So to apply that here I'd say you only need to pull a ROM chip out enough to clear the pins. What you want to do is to allow the pins to re-wipe as the metal of the pin and the socket contact rub together and clean off any oxidation.

We used to use a liquid that we wiped on contacts. I can't remember what it was called cause we called it snot. That's what it looked like a clear thick consistency that made the name appropriate. I can't really say that the stuff worked. Nothing seemed to work that you could tell. Don't use that here!

Anyway in those days we had a schematic for the cards, four SM-15 transistors, I still remember the P/N and nothing else that ever went bad. We had the logic manual which included the origin and destination of the signals, with their names entering and leaving the logic page. Later day machines when the cards got bigger and parts went to chips and then to LSI chips the documentation went to almost nothing. You had a book with every card in the machine with the logic of the card and no origin or destination info.

I'm getting maybe afar but there was a question earlier on this thread about possibly getting the logic/schematic of the motherboard.

Anyway I worked on that old stuff but in those days they weren't all that old. So, I appreciate your experience. I did see a 1965 era Univac 1004 still doing crypto work in 1989.
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by Stan Disbrow »

Hi,

Hmmm. I really don't know how much work it would be to re-cap a DSU. I have never had one. Probably around 100 dollars worth of parts from Digi-Key. The killer will be the time involved. First, someone has to figure out how to get it apart, then ID all the caps. Second, actually changing them. I envision many hours for a tech at a cost of at least 75 dollars an hour. I think this would pretty much require someone to do it themselves or simply decide to not worry about it being a working item. AFAIK, there are no service manuals for these, so there is a good chance of damaging something that cannot be repaired as well.

I have recently brought some vintage 2-way radio equipment back to life, but that sort of equipment was built with the idea of third party service in a radio repair shop. So, the makers produced really good documentation in the form of service manuals. Much like car makers do. The camera makers are secretive and do not support their products in this manner. You buy it, use it, and send it back to them early on. Later on, you junk it and buy new when it fails.

Stan
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umrüd
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Re: DCS 100 - DSU/SCSI nightmare

Post by umrüd »

Hello,

in the meantime i got a second DSU. It seems to be in working order (Monitor and Harddisk are ok, sometimes a get an not stable ISO-adjusting Possibility in the LCD which i interpret as connection to camera). But i can`t bring the Camera to live! In battery/film - mode the camera works ok, so i think the mistake lies in the Kodak-DCS-Line. Is there any Information about the values (voltage, Ampere) from DSU-output connector to Winder/Kamera-Input? In the winder is a voltage reguator similar the one on the DSU-Motherboard (coloured blue). Or are there any fuses in the winder?

Thanks for Help in advance!
Greetings
Ulrich
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