Tech Notes from the Field

This week was a full week if there ever was one.  We managed to dodge a bullet in the power department, survived another AT&T T1 failure, rebounded from an RCS mess, and finished the first steps of a studio upgrade.

Power.  We take it for granted.  A normal facility would have enough available capacity to grow.  Here we do neither.  This is tied into our RCS NexGen installation where we had to add  a server room to accommodate the hardware intensive system.  (not our choice, but we do what we do.)  The facility was built in the mid-80’s for two stations.  Today it house 4 stations, a minimal amount of production space, and a tech center that was expanded to handle the PPM equipment.  The tech panel is connected to a generator and is only capable of 40 Amps, max.  The limit is the generator which we cannot do anything about, yet (future project and story will accompany it), at 12.5kW.  We are max-ed out on the panel with only 5 Amps of headroom on two phases and 0 Amps on the third phase.  With a bit of juggling and shedding non-critical equipment, racks, and even production rooms, we managed to fire up all 18 server class computers and their peripheral equipment.  Mr. Goldberg would be proud of this accomplishment.

Since I dropped the RCS NexGen mess into this and it is associated with this hell, we received the equipment and it was NOT configured with IP addresses which we were told was done.  We were also not given instructions on the Dell FX100 KVM extenders which even Dell does not support.  We ended up finding out that Dell re-brands them under the model FX100 and they actually come from a Canadian company of which our IT dude contacted.  We find they are obsolete and no longer manufactured.  He did receive instructions and got them to work!  We can now proceed on learning how this beast runs and begin to deploy such beast.

On that note, in conjunction with the RCS project we are upgraded a production room.  It is finally getting equipped with a SAS Rubicon console.  Finally all our main facilities will be on the same system.  This was a project that has been postponed for 3 years!  I had the furniture modified to accommodate the smaller frame, a PR&E/Harris Legacy console was removed, and a new Rubicon 16 installed.  The console was up and running by the end of the day as I pre-configured it between the other headaches of the week.  All we need to do is finish connecting peripherals and attend to details.  I am the resident expert on SAS having installed 8 consoles in our facility, one configured as a split-console. One issue that has arisen in this installation is the Telos Console Director.  The display starts out good, but then messes up.  Operation is not an issue, just the display.  Next week begins with a call to Telos to see what I can do to verify anything unusual.  I know the cable from the I/O to the director is good and I know the Desktop Director works just fine.  Interesting that I seem to have issues with Console Directors.  I still have no resolve on my other two that just go stupid and shut down.  A mystery that needs solving!

In the middle of this fun was our routine T1 outage from our friendly folks at AT&T.  This came in the middle of our power management project.  We finally got to deal with a tech that knew what he was doing.  He was baffled by the fact that the circuit was down hard for 2 hours with no signs of problems before or after in the logs.  He proceeded to tear out the circuit and test all the way back to the CO.  He found 80 Volts of cross-battery and had new pairs assigned.  Let’s see how long we go this time.  This circuit has issues at least 3-4 months, and each time AT&T says it tests good.

I did manage to make it to the SBE meeting to hear what Nautel has to offer in the future.  Now there is a company I have not problems with at the moment.

I continue the installation of the Burk ARC Plus system as time permits.  All projects are running together now and two of our stations have gone into live broadcast mode.  We do the best we can to cover everything, it just means we delay projects to accommodate them.

On that note, it was tiring this week.  It took time off today and spent time with my daughter.  We attack next week and fit all in everything in between 3 live broadcasts.  Busy is good, it just makes it difficult to do it right and in the time allotted.  Have a great weekend!