Fixed a 501......

[skinerd]

Just fixed, so far so good anyway, a 501 sent to me.

Damn thing would not boot for shit.......both red and green lights would not go off, ever.........unless unplugged of course.

Noticed while writing the eeprom the rate varied somewhat.....so thinking maybe a bad eeprom chip......pulled one from an old 301 board, got it down and programmed, watching TV on the 508 right now..........yeah,,,,,508, I also changed the harddrive thinking it may be bad......but the new eeprom chip is what got it up........going to rezero the 40 gig and try it again.......

Another note, the sticker build is DCKD, it is now programmed DCEA with a DCED eeprom file......works 100%.

[skinerd]

Damn..........was I celebrating too soon.........unplugged it to put the cover on and plugged it back in, and back to the same god@#$%&*damn thing.......

Started to jtag it, hooked jtag and before I unplugged it to jump OJ1 and the red led went out, unhooked jtag, unpluged PVR, plug back in and light back on.....hook up jtag light goes off...........the jtag is an internal buffered type, so thought maybe it was hooked wrong, can't be, I have been jtagging it the last 2 days. Moved power and ground for buffer chip to another location, no help.
Why would connection jtag cable make the red led go out?? Must be pulling power down, so checked the 3.2v supply, it's at 3.45v, not that bad........but WTF, try another power supply......it's 3.26v, works like a fucking champ..........appearantly 3.45 volts is too much, and hooking jtag cable dropped it enough to work...........another PS closer to 3.2v works flawless....who would have thought 0.2 volts would make a difference, unless it was shitty 3.45v, I don't have a scope here to look at it............might have had a lot of ripples or spikes or something...............

[gearheadib]

Damm Skinerd you are the man!!

[skinerd]

Well to follow up, it is right back to not booting AFTER it gets hot......let it cool and comes right up. It will run all night tho........just don't unplug the sucker.
So it looks like a new power supply helped, it will boot when cool now, before it flat refused ot boot, and then the jtag thing making it boot..........a very trying 501....

[littlelarryjr]

I install external fans on all PVR's, I find that with a second fan running slowly all the time, it cuts the heat by 2/3.

try it,

[skinerd]

I install external fans on all PVR's, I find that with a second fan running slowly all the time, it cuts the heat by 2/3.

try it,
Might just try that, this sucker gets HOT.......

[omare]

I installed 2 fans on the back of my 501's disk. I adapted a hard drive cooler to the 501 which also takes the power source from the hard drive , I bought it from Fry's Outpost and so far the heat emition has greatly diminished.

My 501 had lost some of the conexant chip contact so it started to lose signal very frequently which made it impossible to watch TV normally. I'm no good at electronic soldering so fixing it by myself is out of the question. After the mod with the fans, the internal temperature droped quite a lot, now the ird doesn't lose signal so easily, so maybe that works for you too and the sucker doesn't get too hot.