PM Series laser controller

[stupidsexyflanders]

Looking for a stand alone PM20/21/22 or similar to use as back up .

[taggalucci]

I have a hardly ever used PM25 available and am open to offers.

[lasershowsimon]

Can you post some pics and an idea of what $$ you are looking for? Thanks.

[Yag]

What sort of projector are you looking to connect this to? Most of these herald from an era of gas lasers, so colour control can be a little "clunky" as they were connecting to dichro flags rather than diode intensities or AOMs. I'm a bit of a collector of these, and have a PM19, PM20, PM22 and PM25, and I think only the 22 supports colour properly, though I'll have to admit I've only ever run it as single colour.

I suppose I need a PM21 to complete my collection!

If you can't get your LaserGrafix PM20 to work (which is a shame as it's the easiest to use of all the ones I have, and great for bright hard beam effects on bonfire night) I'd be interested in buying it for spare buttons, as several of mine don't match and are a bit sticky!

[taggalucci]

Can you post some pics and an idea of what $$ you are looking for? Thanks.

Will do. Give me some time to get it out of storage and have some photos taken.

[stupidsexyflanders]

Yag , if i buy the PM25 , you can have the lasergraphix. I think it all works , all leds come on/buttons work and after probing some of the pinouts there is voltage i think they are just connected to the wrong pins for ilda 25 so i would need the output card header pin out . Im connecting it to a two colour projector (blue 1 watt , green 500mw ) . Any help or manual on the PM20 would be most welcome.

[Yag]

Hi,

I never had a full manual for the PM20, just a few pages that listed what I put in the other thread! Mine is slightly bastardised as it lost it's original case, connections and PSU and some lesser knobs! (hence my interest in parts!) but amazingly still works a treat!

To give you a hand decoding the output (if could well have been modded at some point, mine had and it was a bugger to figure it out again) I popped mine open.

I can't get to the board header connection, but if you have a grey 16 core ribbon cable going to the DB15 connector, it should hopefully be the same as mine.

Taking connection 1 to be the red stripe on the ribbon:-

1 (red stripe) Shutter
2 N/C
3 X+ (DB15 5) (ILDA 1)
4 N/C
5 X- (DB15 6) (ILDA 14)
6 N/C
7 N/C
8 N/C
9 Y+ (DB15 4) (ILDA 2)
10 N/C
11 Y- (DB15 3) (ILDA 15)
12 Ground (DB15 1) (ILDA 25)
13 N/C
14 N/C
15 N/C
16 N/C

All the N/C are not connected in mine (cut off my somebody sometime), and my shutter is in fact connected to Pin 15 (so as to match the intensity connections on my other PM controllers) These other connections will contain the colour toggles, but as these buttons are physically missing on mine, you'll have to probe them yourself! I'm not sure what voltage/available current comes out on the shutter/colour signals, I must have been nervous as I stuck a resistor (I think 1K) on the shutter output, possibly over cautious, but I was thinking it used to drive an electro mechanical shutter! May want to meter that before connecting to your diode connections. I've not blown up any TTL drivers with it, but I've not used it on newer analogue stuff. (anybody with more electronics info please leap in here! )

Good luck getting it to go, but as mentioned earlier, it has no live blanking only global and colour shutter toggles. If you're thinking of buying a PM25 this does have blanking which supports analogue level control. I do have a full manual for a PM25 if you'd like to look at one, shoot me a PM with an email address!

[taggalucci]

Here are some pictures taken today...






Just about to connect it to my oscilloscope and confirm its outputs.

I'm open to reasonable offers. I paid £1,172 for it brand new and it's been used twice.

[stupidsexyflanders]

Thanks Yag your a star . I can confirm that the colour outputs are unmodulated 0-off 5 volts on (10ma ) as is the effect wheel outputs. I will be trying it on my analouge input driver so will let you know how it works as the colour buttons give you 5 volts on , 0 volts off. My ribbon is the same the end cables have been cut off. Thanks Again.

Aaron

[Yag]

Good luck getting it to go, since getting mine out to get the info, I can't stop playing with it!