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HELP! - Obsession II - DPS

Hello, 

we just acquired an OBI-II DPS and it worked! For about a week... now it still seems to work, but the secondary processor won't boot. It seems that the HDD isn't accessible (doesn't show up in the BIOS as available). 

So.... anyone got any suggestions on what can be done. I know it's considered a dinosaur; but it's our "new" pet. I'm wondering how long before the #1 processor drive might fail too (I assume at this point it might be better to leave the whole system running so the HDD doesn't need to spin up too often?)

Questions:

1) Has anyone tried replacing/upgrading HDD in an OBS-II? (any luck with SSD or something else?)

2) Is it possible to clone the drive and copy it to a replacement of some kind? (I assume cloning the drive that will boot and putting clone into the #2 unit).

3) Is there a way to boot from a floppy or USB flash drive (since it has USB ports?)

Any other suggestions? (yes I may call Tech Support, but afraid of the cost of that route.....)

  • Hi there. Hope you are having fun with your new toy. I will try to answer your questions.

    I am assuming that when you say the secondary won't boot past the Bios, this is based on what you are seeing with a monitor connected directly to the unit?  Based on time and age it is possible that the CMOS battery has died or lost charge and the bios settings may need to change. You can review the community server https://support.etcconnect.com/ETC/Consoles/Obsession_2/Obsession_II_ISA960_Failure_and_CMOS for information. 

    This may involve contacting technical support or a local service center to resolve. I is a little more complicated than just replacing a battery. 

    In answer to your other questions

    1  If you are looking to replace the hard drives the only bet is to send it in for repair at ETC. Because of the way dual tracking works in the Obsession family matched hard drives are critical. So replacing one means replacing both. While you may have the technical chops to do this yourself, you need specific hardware based on fixed parameters in the software and limitations with the age of the processors.  SSD is not advised. 

    2. The process is not as simple as two cloned drives, there are some specific settings unique to each drive that allow it to identify as an Obsession and to support tracking. 

    3. This is running on a mixed DOS and VX works platform so USB is not supported. You can boot from a floppy use Disk 1 of the software upgrade set. 

    Lastly....As this is way out of warranty you may find that others have done some outside-of-the-box modifications ( ie SSD, USB, processor modifications) and want to follow suit. It's your toy and you can do with it what you want. In fairness, I have heard of them and seen them, the critical point is ETC can't support them.

    So if you want to go "rogue", you are kinda on your own.  My advice would be to get it working first then decide how much you want to modify it. 

    Hope this helps

  • in reply to Davefox

    Thanks for the honest opinion! ETC did say they could "look" at it, but ultimately it is just a functional toy and so we'll probably just convert it to SPS and call it done. What we really need to focus $$$ on from our school is an upgrade to EOS at this point. 

    If there are any resources or people that have "hacked" their OB-II's please post some ideas! 

    Thanks

  • in reply to Davefox

    One more quick question, as I get to thinking about this off-and-on every few months.... I picked up a pair of matched HDD's from another OBSII-DPS. When I tried to boot one up the system says it can't load further since the channel parameters don't match - ours is a 4800, these came from something lower. Is there a way to "downgrade" a parameter somehow and use these drives? Don't really need 4800 channels, just happy with more than 192 that our Express has.

    (I've tried reinstalling lower OS from the disks (etc website), but to no avail.) Any suggestions along this line? 

    Also, the SP system seems to be working okay so I'm not too worried about tracking - I'm assuming nothing simple can be done and that this second processor unit is just gonna be a cool looking doorstop...

    Thanks again!!!

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