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Purelink DM-66M - confusion

KariKari Posts: 13
in AMX General Discussion
A coworker and I are trying to control this DVI switcher. We can not find any information on the pinout, but have tried using the manufacturer's supplied cable to no avail. We've tried the standard 3 pin straight thru and crossover. We have the baud rate (no flow control) and the protocol manual. We can't even get a peep out of it on boot up.

Anyone worked with one of these before? Any help is appreciated :)

Comments

  • HARMAN_icraigieHARMAN_icraigie Posts: 660
    Kari wrote:
    A coworker and I are trying to control this DVI switcher. We can not find any information on the pinout, but have tried using the manufacturer's supplied cable to no avail. We've tried the standard 3 pin straight thru and crossover. We have the baud rate (no flow control) and the protocol manual. We can't even get a peep out of it on boot up.

    Anyone worked with one of these before? Any help is appreciated :)

    Saw one a few months ago, don't remember having any issues - I will look back and see if I noted anything.
  • Danny CampbellDanny Campbell Posts: 311
    I've been working on a system with 2 of these devices. Of the two, one was DOA and we had it replaced.
  • KariKari Posts: 13
    Purelink - I am not impressed

    I'm writing this little blurb so that you never accidentally buy a Purelink ds-99m switcher unless you feel like wasting time.

    Apparently the protocol manual was written by a team of monkeys. You'll find this gem on the website which is conflict with the other one that ships with the product. The commands are listed with bits swapped (maybe for puzzle solving fun!). The most important thing to remember is to add 6 to certain things, but you have to guess when to do that.

    There's also this handy disk that ships with the product. It doesn't install any software - instead it gives you a cool worm type virus which spirals through your system eventually making it so that webpages never load.

    Naturally, when you call tech support to tell them that nothing is working, they ask you if you've been to their website (remember your webpages don't load now) When you mention the virus, you'll find that they know all about it; this virus is the fault of some ACTUAL monkeys they hire to burn the Purelink CDs - not their fault! Too bad you got 3000 instances of this virus.

    Fortunately, after 6 hours with a terminal type program one of our engineers cracked the thing and got it to perform a switch. The codes are in HEX sent at 19200 8,N,1 over a CROSSOVER cable. That's the easy part. The hard part is interpreting the actual commands. All I can say is a single command is carpal tunnel long and is infinitely counterintuitive. If your company/consultant has ever had a brain vacation and specs one of these:

    a) I'm sorry.
    b) Shoot me a line. The protocol is longer than my patience right now.

    Take care and happy coding :)
  • DHawthorneDHawthorne Posts: 4,584
    Wow ... to think I almost spec'd one, but I discovered it doesn't truly support HDCP. Here's an alternative for those who it's not too late: http://www.hdtvsupply.com/6x6hdmasw.html .
  • Danny CampbellDanny Campbell Posts: 311
    Here is what an associate and I discovered with the Purelink 99M II switcher.

    The documentation on the web site is wrong. The Dtrovision folks sent us to their ftp stie to download the correct documentation - which was also wrong.

    The documentation is "almost" correct if you do some character translation an remember to add 36 zeros and an exclaimation point at the end of each command. Here is the translation table I used:
    CHAR cVIDCODE[9] =           // TRANSLATE 1-9 TO PROPER CODE FOR PURELINK 99M II
{
    '6',	// 1
    '7', // 2
    '8',	// 3
    '9',	// 4
    ':',	// 5
    ';',	// 6
    '<',	// 7
    '=',	// 8
    '>'	// 9
}


    So in the world of Purlink 99m, a zero is 0. But a 1 is a 6, a 2 is 7, and so on. Somehow they got off by 5 bytes when looking at the ascii table.

    Here is a function that I call to make a switch. Note that in this system, I have projectors on output ports 1 and 2, and LCD displays on ports 3 and 4. Anything I send to a projector is also sent to the corresponding LDC display, so ports 1 and 3 are a set and ports 2 and 4 are a set.
    DEFINE_FUNCTION AVSWITCH1_TIE (AVIN, AVOUT)
{
	cPCMD="'*0010080',cVIDCODE[AVOUT],'0',cVIDCODE[AVIN],'0',cVIDCODE[AVOUT+2],'0',cVIDCODE[AVIN],'000000000000000000000000000000000000!'"  
	QUE_PCMD(cPCMD)
}

    So what happens above is that I send the start of command (*) followed by the device id (001) with a code of 0 indicating that it is a command and the length of the data which in this case is 8 bytes (08). Then I give a leading 0 and the translated value for the input or output. All followed by the zeros and !.

    The function packages all of this into the cPCMD variable and queues it for processing. The queue process is basically waiting for a response from the Purelink before sending the next command.

    What we did to discover this was to install their software on a laptop and use a utility that showed the data being sent and received by the serial port. I was only interested in finding the proper way to do the switch, so I did not explore any of the other features of the device.
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