Gilderfluke&Co 'Smart' Brick Animation Control System User Manual
Page 178
The electrical output from PC•MACs is at RS-422 voltage levels
rather than the RS-232 that these LaserDisk players really want to
see. If this causes a problem, or it the wire runs between PC•MACs
and the LaserDisk player are long, then you may want to add a
RS-232 to RS-422 converter to the LaserDisk player.
In general, you send a command to the LaserDisk player as
a single ASCII character. The LaserDisk player will then respond
that it has received the command with a ‘ACK’ (0A). When it has
completed the task it will sometimes respond with a ‘COMPLETION
CODE’ (01 usually). Each command must be transmitted one at
a time, after which you must wait for a return code(s) before you
can send any additional commands.
The majority of commands which you might need to use are
all pretty simple ones. The one complicated ‘search’ command
is handled transparently to you when you insert a LaserSearch
(01) character in the string being sent to the LaserDisk player (the
Smart Brick Brain must be told it is running a Sony player in the
configuration screen). This string only performs a search for the
starting frame of the show on the LaserDisk player. For this reason
it is normally followed by a ‘F-PLAY’ (3A) command in the same
string.
A typical start string for a LaserDisk show is:
LaserSearch F-PLAY
Translated into HEX ASCII, this string becomes (this is what you
would enter):
01 3A 8A 00
and it would be displayed on the String Setup Menu as:
01 3A (0A) 00
Notice that after the LaserSearch command we have to then
tell the LaserDisk to start playing, and that we tell the Smart Brick
Brain to wait until it gets an ‘ACK’ (0A) back from the LaserDisk
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