Gilderfluke&Co Frequency Shift Keyed/Remote Terminal Unit - Manual (Page 23)

- PIONEER LaserDisk COMMANDS -
The Pioneer LaserDisk players all share a common command format. A full description of the com-
mands can be found in the technical publications available from Pioneer Communications of America.
They can be reached at (408) 988-1702.
LaserDisks used with the FSK/RTU may be recorded in the CAV or CLV format. This allows up to 1 hour
per side. The FSK data must be recorded on one of the audio tracks much as they would be on any audio
tape FSK installation. The gaps in the FSK data between shows is used by the FSK/RTU to recognize the ends
of shows and decide when to send each of the strings.
The LaserDisk player must be configured for 9600 baud, 8 bit data, and 1 stop bit. On the LD-V8000,
you also must set the ‘TxD Terminator’ to ‘<C/R>’. Connections are made as follows:
Pioneer LaserDisk
DB-15 SIGNAL SIGNAL FROM/TO FSK/RTU
2 DATA OUT - serial data in to FSK/RTU (GREEN)
3 DATA IN - serial data out from FSK/RTU (BLACK)
1, 11 or 15 GROUND signal ground (BLUE or WHITE)
The electrical output from the FSK/RTU 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 FSK/RTU 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 two ASCII characters (with occasional vari-
ables), followed by a <carriage return> character (0D). The LaserDisk player will then respond when it has
completed the task with a upper case ‘R’ followed by a <carriage return> character (0D). A number of dif-
ferent commands can be stacked together and then followed by a single <carriage return> character
(0D) to get them all rolling. The LaserDisk player will go through all of these commands in the order they
were entered and then return a ‘R’ followed by a <carriage return> character (0D) when it has finished
the last command. This can save a lot of string space if you are sending complicated strings to the
LaserDisk player.
The majority of commands which you might need to use are all pretty simple two or three character
ones. A typical PLAY string for a LaserDisk show is:
PL <CR> (R) (<CR>) end-o-string
Translated into HEX ASCII, this string becomes (this is what you would enter)
50 4C 0D D2 8D 00
Notice that we have to tell the LaserDisk to start playing, and that this command is followed by one
<carriage return> character to be sent out. Following this we tell the FSK/RTU to wait until it gets first an ‘R’,
and then a <CR> back from the LaserDisk player. After this we have a ‘00’ to tell the FSK/RTU that it has
found the end of the string.
A typical end string for a LaserDisk show is:
ST <CR> (R) (<CR>) end-o-string
Translated into HEX ASCII, this string becomes (this is what you would enter):
53 54 0D D2 8D 00
The format of this string is pretty much like that of the startup string, except the PL command has been
replaced by a ST (still frame) command for the LaserDisk player. This freezes the image to whatever the last
image on the video disk was. Other commands are available for blanking out the video, ejecting the disk,
G ILDERFLUKE & C O . • 205 S OUTH F LOWER S T . • B URBANK , C ALIF . 91502-2102 • 818/840-9484 • FAX 818/840-9485
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