Fidelipac Digital Cart Machine

[gunterm]

I recently got a whole bunch of used broadcast gear from a local FM which included two Fidelipac cart machines, the digital doesn't work at all, just powers up with blank displays, and the tape one powers up but the pinch roller doesn't pop up without assistance like it should...

The question is, are there any repair manuals for either of these things and is there an easy way to fix the pinch roller problem?

thanks!

[Rob Stutson]

Try Cartguys (if they're still around) - IIRC they handle Fidelipac cart machines, but not sure if they support the digital ones.

[gunterm]

I should post pictures of the digital unit, it's really neat... has AES/EBU I/O in addition to analog, and uses floppies instead of carts!

[RadeoEngineer]

I should post pictures of the digital unit, it's really neat... has AES/EBU I/O in addition to analog, and uses floppies instead of carts!

Boy, that rattles the old memory cage.  Never had one but they were pretty cool when they came out.  A lot more promise than ITC's digital offering.

[awsherrill]

I vaguely recall going to an SBE meeting where the Fidelipac machine was demonstrated.  If I remember right, you were supposed to use special high-density floppies for recording audio with the unit (the expensive kind you couldn't get at the office supply stores).  You could use regular floppies in a pinch, but you were limited to about 30-40 seconds of recording time per disk.

For that reason and a few others, I didn't seriously consider buying the thing.

[jdiamantis]

I had a whole plant full of those things in the mid 90s. Great idea. Terrible execution.

There were microswitches in the drives that were constantly failing, causing the machine to fail.

I had one full time tech dedicated to keeping those machines on the air; replacing those switches constantly, as Fidelipak could not keep up with supplying us drives to keep them running.


JDiamantis