I just acquired four Technobeams and...

Here are a few things to look at on the T-beams. First of all, The black or grey stripe have nothing to do with anything. The early versions were grey and the newer ones are black. The guts are the same except for 2 things. The newer versions are capable of iris and have the motor driver for the iris on the mother board. And the extra wiring is there for the iris. That's it. The firmware can be uploaded to older and newer versions by doing the cross load. I know this because I own both styles of these units and have since they were first made in 1998.
your color wheel sticking could be missing teeth of the plastic gear that turnes the color wheel. I have had to replace them on both color and gobo wheels before. No guaranty that is what it is, but from your description, that would be worth checking.
The LCD controllers have parameters from 0-99 on each function to include the backlight. If you keep going on direction with the cursor, it will be at 99(full bright) then go to 0 ( out completely).
The technobeam LCD controller is capable of running both iris and non iris T-beams and will also run the studio spot 250 as they are the same fixture internally and have all the same parameters in the same order.
One important thing to also check on the T-beams is that you are setting them up in the right mode. The same mother boards and firmware is in the technoray and technopro, Also there is a full 18 ch mode and a reduced 14 ch mode.
Make sure you are running them all the same. The 14 ch mode will not respond with the LCD controller. Only works with DMX.
Now, for simplicity, DMX will be more efficient for you and allow you to seamlessly control all the fixtures you have all together.
Light Jockey can do the job or you can use Hog PC. There are also a few inexpensive boards out there that can marry all these together as well. However, don't let the price drive your decision. Reason being is that you will notice how spending the extra money can at times save you a lot of programming work down the road because of the capabilities of one control system to another. You will also find that the I-beam and trackspot are very choppy on pan tilt in DMX mode because there was no 16 bit processing in them. If you are doing medium to fast movement you will never notice, but slow movements will be obvious.
Personally, I would save your money and get the Hog widget if you plan on doing any live and on the fly stuff. LJ can run stuff well once it's programmed, but is not good for being able to grab the lights and modify function while the lights are running.
And if you ever plan on doing events where you need cues, scenes, and running Cue to Cue, LJ again will not do it for you.
Hope this helps.
Oh and one more thing. Check the T-beam with the color problem for anything hitting when you have the fixture off and turn the color wheel by hand. Sometimes things happen and you could also have something hitting the tab on the edge of the wheel

Here are a few things to look at on the T-beams. First of all, The black or grey stripe have nothing to do with anything. The early versions were grey and the newer ones are black. The guts are the same except for 2 things. The newer versions are capable of iris and have the motor driver for the iris on the mother board. And the extra wiring is there for the iris. That's it. The firmware can be uploaded to older and newer versions by doing the cross load. I know this because I own both styles of these units and have since they were first made in 1998.
your color wheel sticking could be missing teeth of the plastic gear that turnes the color wheel. I have had to replace them on both color and gobo wheels before. No guaranty that is what it is, but from your description, that would be worth checking.
The LCD controllers have parameters from 0-99 on each function to include the backlight. If you keep going on direction with the cursor, it will be at 99(full bright) then go to 0 ( out completely).
The technobeam LCD controller is capable of running both iris and non iris T-beams and will also run the studio spot 250 as they are the same fixture internally and have all the same parameters in the same order.
One important thing to also check on the T-beams is that you are setting them up in the right mode. The same mother boards and firmware is in the technoray and technopro, Also there is a full 18 ch mode and a reduced 14 ch mode.
Make sure you are running them all the same. The 14 ch mode will not respond with the LCD controller. Only works with DMX.
Now, for simplicity, DMX will be more efficient for you and allow you to seamlessly control all the fixtures you have all together.
Light Jockey can do the job or you can use Hog PC. There are also a few inexpensive boards out there that can marry all these together as well. However, don't let the price drive your decision. Reason being is that you will notice how spending the extra money can at times save you a lot of programming work down the road because of the capabilities of one control system to another. You will also find that the I-beam and trackspot are very choppy on pan tilt in DMX mode because there was no 16 bit processing in them. If you are doing medium to fast movement you will never notice, but slow movements will be obvious.
Personally, I would save your money and get the Hog widget if you plan on doing any live and on the fly stuff. LJ can run stuff well once it's programmed, but is not good for being able to grab the lights and modify function while the lights are running.
And if you ever plan on doing events where you need cues, scenes, and running Cue to Cue, LJ again will not do it for you.
Hope this helps.
Oh and one more thing. Check the T-beam with the color problem for anything hitting when you have the fixture off and turn the color wheel by hand. Sometimes things happen and you could also have something hitting the tab on the edge of the wheel