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[pwhitbec]

Background: I work at a horse racetrack and we have old crown IQ-pip  system for the Racing side of the facility. We have 8 amps (older Comtech 200/400/800) staged at different locations throughout the building with the IQ-PIP wiring. On the new casino side of our building (which MUST remain seperate from the racing PA) we have nice new IQ 5.1 software and such running another totally seperate Crown system. This is the good side. on the racing side I am running a dinosaur PIP IQ syetem with  8 amps. and an SMX6 from a Mac. I told you it was old.
It appears the SMX has crapped out for about the 4th time (compressors all over the place, some mics go up and down randomly, tinny sounds, feedback etc. smells likes it's burning too, a sure sign of failure. I can smell caps going and the announcer said it was smooking just before it went nuts). My company is too cheap to let me replace the system. I have removed the SMX-6 and now I get a ton of interference in the video signals I use which is obviously coming from the amps being maxed out. I know that when they lose their link/comm they go to max volume and I cannot control the attenuation any more due to no IQ talk. It seems the entire system is not responding, says no link at the interface, even though it tones and measures fine, it just won't work with the IQ anymore.  It is driving me and my master control guys crazy. I have hooked up mic mixers to the drive line and even nice Aphex compressors but everytime our track announcer talks in anything over a normal voice (have you ever known an announcer that doesn't scream int the mics?) it throws tons of distortion lines into our video feed.
Anyway, my big question is what can I put in the pip slots so that I can just use a plain old Shure mic mixer to eliminate the troublesome SMX-6 and the IQ system? I have several amps and would need to buy enough modules for 8 amps. I just want to be able to manually run the thing till they decide to loosen their purse strings. I was thinking the EBCd's but have never seen them. They appear to be what I may need. But, can these be found anywhere? Or do I tell my company to bite the bullet and just buy a totally new PA system for $40k? I would need to find a new job then too.
Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

[DGlass]

The cheapest and easies thing for you to us would be the original PIP-BB input module. The PIP-BB does use screw terminals on the input though. The second choice would be the PIP-FX module. This module has a standard Female XLR connector for each input.
Both these cards are just standard input modules with no processing or anything else.
They can be ordered from our Parts Department here at Crown. When you order either make sure you tell the parts people that these are for PIP-1 series amplifiers or you may get the wrong ones.