Here's a weird one, my Show Designer does not have a MODIFY FIXTURE or ADD FIXTURE option.. it goes right from PATCH to SET DMX SPEED.... tried holding down the ADD button while scrolling and the only other choice I get is the memory erase (it didn't help)... ???

Also, when I SELECT FIXTURES, the fixture names do not appear in the LCD... in fact, nothing appears, it just says "SELECT FIXTURES FOR PROGRAMMING" no matter which fixture buttons I press... the faders do take effect, after pushing a select button, weird...

??? I was going to try a software update, am wondering if a standard null modem cable is the same as a serial laplink cable (I only have a parallel laplink cable)... ???

Thanks Support!

Yes you need to upgrade the software. What version do you now have? If it's 1.** you have to send in to upgrade past 2.**. We can take care of that for you. Yes the cable is a serial lap link connector. By the way be patient when doing the upload it can crash a few times.

Not being picky but am being overly nosy since I do firmware stuff daily in my day job.

Why is it necessary to send it in for upgrades above a 1.x release? Is it a new chip set? New storage module? Or in general it's been shown that users tend to not be able to do this on their own? I've done some painful firmware upgrades over the years, so I'm no stranger to these issues.

I mean, I'm not knocking ADJ. I've seen other vendors of other gear take similar approaches, but when you've got thousands in the field, a company can't just do that sort of thing, they have to be self-supporting as much as possible. However, a DMX controller isn't going to be like a corporate network.

new chip set and some other mods to the board. I don't remember since that was a long time ago. over 4 years.

Yup, board mods are generally a required "trip home", but depending on the initial design, chipset swapouts are can sometimes be user installed.

OK, makes sense to me. That's what I'd do in such an instance.

Hey Chris by the way I meant to say hi "how you doing"

GO0D NEWS, this particular Show Designer (one of two that I own, the first one is having the "freak out" problem that Support says can only be fixed by a new board that's on back order) was already on v2.00 of the software and it successfully took the 2.14 software, on the first try even! Thanks for the advice. Also, in case anyone is curious, a regular null modem cable did work to do the transfer!