I have a customer with a P5 Series 8 processor - from the looks of it, it looks like a H8P5-D48-120 and two additional D48 boards and the system is full of Vario dimmers and GRX Grafik Eyes, many hidden all throughout the house. In other words, it was one of those "job security" installations. On top of that, the person who installed this 15 years ago (or so) never bothered engraving the see-touch keypads or even bothered putting on stickers on it. So yesterday, I was tasked with trying to make sense of the system and perhaps even engraving the keypads so I tried to extract the programming.
I created a dummy file and added the processor to the enclosure, fired up terminal and voila, found the processor and extracted the database and saved it. So far so good. I closed the dummy file and tried opening the extracted file and it would give me a "3343 Unrecognized database format" error. I thought maybe the system was an Interactive system but the Interactive software told me that it was an Illuminations software. I tried extracting the database again using RS232 and got the same result. The file size is about a 1.6 Megabytes and the same as all the other HWI files that I have so it extracted something. I've emailed a copy to tech support but in the past when I've had the exact same issue, they had no luck opening the file so I have little hope that they will now so I need options into opening it, even if it's a corrupted file.
Perhaps, someone can give me a tip about extracting the file correctly. This system probably hasn't been touched in 7 years so should I use an older version of Illumination? Could the original installer have somehow added more "job security" and password protected the database so jetski wouldn't work? This is frustrating for so many reasons. I of course can't make any change to the system, but even more scary, that's a 15 year old processor so if it dies, even if I'm able to source an old processor off Ebay or Lutron by some miracle has one in their factory for $4000 (again to this day I haven't got a straight answer from obsoleteproducts@lutron about what they actually have), I would have to factory reset the ENTIRE system which I know nothing about which would take a week to trace and even then I probably couldn't get it to where it was before; or if they ever have to upgrade to QS, again, it would take days to trace. For the life of me, I don't know why Lutron has made extracting so hard on both their systems. On QS you need the exact version and on Illumination, I've got corrupted files a few times.
Oddly enough I remember being at another house some years ago and had the same issue but when I revisited the exact same house and the exact same processor (which the owner sweared nobody else had touched since), I was able to extract and open the file. So what happened there? Was the memory corrupted and became uncorrupted? I probably used 1.64 (or older) the first time and 1.65 the 2nd time but in the current case I've just used 1.65. Any help is appreciated.
Looking into the future, if I ever do have to upgrade this to QS, can I use QSX? There are no RPMs here and I know the Varios would need to be replaced with RF dimmers, but can I use the legacy keypads and legacy GRX grafik eyes with QSX or are they not going to do that?