May 18, 2011

Note: I had the wrong date listed as the subject before. I was off May 17th. I went to Prescott on the 18th. Thanks. --David

Went to Prescott to work on their distance learning system (upgrade the codec and TAM).  The room was not available until after lunch, so I headed to the office.  Once there, I helped get folks into the APSCN program on the Macs.  When the Macs fire up, our network goes to a crawl. I have to figure out if it is a Mac-thing or a Parallels-thing.  Placed a call to DIS and eventually determined the problem is local (also discovered a couple other network-related issues thanks to the wonderful help I received!  We have some of the best folks working for us at the state level.

While troubleshooting and waiting for phone calls from DIS, I hooked up my mini with a usb-to-serial cable to my own DL equipment to make sure everything would work once I got back to Prescott.  I downloaded some additional software needed for the TAM upgrade.  After the DIS call and other general email/troubleshooting, I headed back to Prescott.

The codec upgrade went smoothly.  Well, once we had the FULL key codes. Turned out the printout cut off the last digit.  Thank goodness for email. The codec upgraded from F2.3 to F9.0.2 (through various stages of upgrades) just fine, though very slow going even through a directly-connected CAT5 cable.

The TAM upgrade failed because I could never get the mini to talk to the TAM.  After calling tech support, we determined that the TAM itself was bad.  We were doing all these upgrades because the original thought was that the touch panel was bad.  Looks like the tech folks on the support end missed that one until I stepped in.  That is not "tooting my own horn," but rather a demonstration that over-the-phone troubleshooting sometimes just doesn't cut it.

I did get a nice compliment, though.  I was told that I had gone above and beyond ("covered all the bases and then some," I was told) in trying to get things to work.  That's how I am: I will exhaust every possible avenue if feasible.  The downside to that is that I am wired such I will keep trying sometimes past the point of cost-effectiveness.  That is, it may cost more in man-hours than the device is worth - or cost more in man-hours than it would cost to start over with a clean slate.  Guess that's the techie in me.