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Hitachi CMP307 Plasma

I'm working on a project that has a couple of old Hitachi CMP307 plasmas and I'm having trouble getting control. The Engrish documentation that I have on it is really thin.

The plasma has an 8 pin DIN, and is connected with a pre-made dongle with a CAT-5 connector on the other end. This connectes to a series of wires spliced together using phoenix blocks, that eventually end up in the closet to connect to a COMM-2 card. The docs say that the connection is 9600, 7 bit, no parity, and one stop bit. You apparently need to send a hex 05 to get into terminal mode, then commands are accepted.

My problem is that I can't get them to communicate at all. After sending the 05, it should return 06. Swapping 2 and 3 on the AMX end does nothing.

So I basically have two quesitions. 1 - does anyone have any experience with these beasties and want to share advice? 2 - any suggestions on how to map out he nightmare cabling issues?

Comments

  • ericmedleyericmedley Posts: 4,177
    I would first verify that the wire is good. I personally would launch through the roof if I saw a bunch of wire splices like you describe. RS232 is goofy enough without trying to suss out a bunch of trunk-slammer wiring.

    A couple tricks I know to suss out wire is to hook up a laptop with Hyperterminal or PUtty and see if you see good communication. If you don't have a laptop available, you can always short out pins 2-3 at the TV end and watch in Netlinx to see if the string you sent gets back to you okay. That way you'll at least know the wire is getting there.

    Once you're sure the wire is good then you're back to good ole rs232 trouble shooting.

    I always take the Myth-Busters approach: Eliminate as many variables from a problem as you can, then try to solve.
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