Plasthmatic Victory

[Gannon]

My father and his bride got a great deal on a 42-inch RCA-branded plasma flatscreen a few years back...I was surprised to see it appear around Christmastime.

It barely made it past the second year...and as a lifer in the Home Entertainment Electronics industry, that really pissed me off. I am against the whole land-filling trend of throwing broken product away, so I went on a search to see if it could be resurrected.

Discovered...after pulling off the back panel...that theirs is actually a re-badged Samsung set. That is not uncommon, I've seen other brand-name circuit boards and more marketed under another since I began in the business. Usually, at least in the past ten years, you cannot go wrong with Samsung.

I found a forum called BadCaps, which every tech-wannabee should know. It brought to my attention an epidemic which has caused unlikely failures with inexpensive hifi and computers for the last ten years...bad capacitors, reportedly usually from a few known sources in Taiwan. I suspect a bit of propaganda or bias, but will reserve comment until I see the proof. Their forum is filled with threads of other's problems with televisions, hifi, computers, and appliances...the chances of your product already having a fix description listed is pretty good.

Through them, I met the fine fellows at ShopJimmy...a Minnesota-based television parts clearinghouse. They have created a series of instructional videos specific to various flatscreen technology, and have on-call technical support. I do so wish they'd co-ordinate the instructions better with the board-purchasing portion of their site, but after buying five circuit boards for less than it would cost to have a professional out...then swapping 'em until we saw light on the panel...my dad has his flatscreen back for Easter.

So, if you have a flatscreen that fails...don't just toss it. There might be a reasonable way to bring it back to life...as long as the screen isn't physically damaged.


Cheers

[Jimaz]

Good job!

You not only fixed the problem but you shared your resources so others can fix theirs.

I hear most of that waste ends up somewhere in Africa for recycling and is creating a horrendous pollution problem there.

[Gannon]

Well, that's what they get for not being a portion of the labor or raw materials or production or consumption of the corporate capitalist marketplace. They have to participate somehow.

Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Only way for me to react to knowing that without exploding.

It was a little frustrating, because one bad board can make another upstream from it fail also...all the way to the panel shorting out. So, a panel test at first is necessary, but you can only do them on plasma sets. Has something to do with the drive circuitry...with LCD there is no extra room for a test which would only really serve to potentially keep someone from buying another new one. Heh. [[yet another reason why plasmas are better than LCDs)

That said, the instructions for testing the power supply and main digital logic board could use some improvement. H-m-m-n-n, come to think of it...no reason why I couldn't mock up a quick forensic analysis of what I did.

But then I'd have to admit to being more surprised than anyone else in the room that I made it work. At the end, in frustration after five visits...with the required four day waiting period, since we were too cheap to pay for rush shipping...I was just lining up the versions of the various boards and swapping them back to their originals one at a time. I basically rebuilt the set back to its original state, with two new boards out of the five swapped out. [[figured that over the month, I'd actually done enough labor to have built thirty of 'em!)

I was at it that last day for four hours or so, the last two being this mathematical game of pick-the-lock with the right combination of boards. I wouldn't have done that, but my gal noticed a flash and snow on the screen EARLY in the process that night, but didn't say anything because it quickly went away. I wasn't looking at the front, I was counting clicks after the plug was inserted in the wall...then again after the power button was depressed once.

The set had been fixed THEN, less than a half hour into that Friday night...but since I didn't bother actually looking at the front I had no idea, because the set was still clicking multiple times...supposedly indicating a power supply auto-protection relay doing its job. I hadn't learned that multiple clicks BEFORE the power switch press and those afterwards were very different.

So, yeah, there was a learning curve, and we would've been better off if the last Y-Drive board from ShopJimmy weren't bad...luckily the second one we had in line, the first sent from them as replacement, worked with the last Y-Buffer...and all of the original other boards, including the Power Supply, Main Logic, and possibly the X-Drive.

I know none of those terms make sense, but with a little bit of instruction with the ShopJimmy techs...and possibly reading the excellent backgrounders on the BadCaps forum...I think at least a third to maybe half of the population can fix their own HDTV sets.

This might be important if Best Buy lays off all the good GeekSquad techs. Heh.

But I got lucky finding the combination that night, it would've been one more round if we waited for another Y-Drive...although if only the instructions were more clear on the Power Supply and Main Logic troubleshooting...I never would've purchased those boards. Not sure SJ would take them back, nor if I even expect them to...live and learn. We still saved money on the repair...and learned a ton along the way.

Plus, now my dad's neighbor is afraid of me.

Cheers