Aaaaarrhghghghghgh!

I got the player back from Rod last Friday and it's been running perfectly since then. But...

I plugged it into the car this morning and it went straight to the Pulsing LED of Power - no start-up screen, or anything. So after waiting the customary time for it to boot up, I then press the top button (to wake it up) and the top button (to unpause it), and music cometh forth from the empeg verily like a fountain. In short, the player does everything exactly as if the display was working, except the VFD never lights up and it always looks like it's on standby.

This is not optimal. I've checked the cables and everything is plugged in nice and tight (with the extra electrical tape that Rod put on the cable just in case it started fraying unexpectedly), and I can't see any obvious blown things or patches of magic smoke leakage. It seems related to its behaviour in the previous incident, but not exactly, and I know I did nothing more than put it down gently and pick it up again between when it was working fine and when it was not displaying at all.

Help? Please?

Paul (wanting the below to be true...)

The fact that you still get the strobe / standby LED even with music playing bothers me... No sign that the display cable is out of alignment, frayed, damaged?

Thats odd, sounds like a problem my buddy has with his mark2 (non A edition). Sometimes he'll plug it in the car and get no display but get audio.. He just pulls it out and back in and its back. Didn't really bother him that much

You might want to take a digital camera, look through with a zoom on. See if you can find any traces of cracking or breaks in the glass, in the electrical contacts, in the cable connections or the fuses on the main board. Anything unusual should be photographed and posted for evaluation.

One last check - you don't have the screen blanker or any software level display functions running, right? You might want to take a look with VNC or one of the other remote display software packages, just to get into the settings of the player to verify everything is okay there as well.

Unfortunately I think this may be my fault.

I managed to blow one of the fuses while initially testing the display board and replaced it with a 250mA fuse that I had on hand so I could continue testing. What I later forgot to do was source and replace the temporary fuse with one of the correct 1A rating. My guess is that the underrated fuse has blown. You could confirm this my measuring the voltage on the capacitor on the back of the display board for 60 volts (be careful).

Of course I am happy to fix this and apologise for the inconvenience.

Rod.

The digikey part number for the proper fuse is WK4661CT-ND if it is that little smd one.

Thanks for that. I'll have no problems getting the replacement. That's why I feel really bad about not doing it right the first time. Too excited to have the player fixed and back to Paul to remember to replace the temporary fuse.

Rod.

*starts to relax, stops twitching*

No worries, Rod; I might call in to my partner's brother-in-law (it's complicated) who has a good soldering iron and multimeter, and I'll spec the part today and see if I can get this done myself. If not, is it OK if I drive up to Sydney on Saturday and meet up with you and we do this thing? There's no point wasting half a week in postage and delivery if it can be done in half a day round trip.

It's just a pity I haven't got the Subaru Liberty we're planning on getting yet; that'd be so much nicer to cruise up to Sydney with. Heh - I must be getting old - I used to say that about the NX...

Give me a call on 0422 392 081 if you want to talk this over.

Thanks in advance,

Paul (keeping sig for now)

I'll be helping out on a sheep farm near Cowra this weekend. I'll give you a call, maybe we can organise something.

Rod.

/me resists temptation to make sheep jokes

D'oh - FAILED

Q. How does a New Zealander find a sheep in long grass?
A. Delightful

PS: APOLOGIES TO ALL NEW ZEALANDERS

Cheers, Sim

Oi...
Australia has more sheep than us...

Jai

They need them, they have a higher human population...

Oi...
Australia has more sheep than us...

I was going to use the Welsh as the target of ridicule, but they've had a hard week at the rugby & all, so I thought I'd let them off on this occasion

Cheers, Sim

And what is wrong with owning a pair of velcro gloves

That Rod...

Never mind the velcro gloves, I worry what the man gets up to with the glue gun! He's glued down every part that he's touched, including a large glob of glue right on the 1/4A fuse that I had to get at. After a good bit of odd-hackery with a pocket knife I managed to get the glue away and a bit of soldering iron. So for a small moment I was cursing your name, Rod, but in the long run it's not such a big deal. As long as I can get that replacement fuse I'll be able to get it all working fine. I'll probably rip up several tracks from the motherboard trying to get the glue off so I can remove the IDE cable to make the job easier, but at least I'll know it won't come off on anything less than direct thermonuclear strike.

So all go here, Rod, whenever you can send that fuse down. Thanks in advance,

Paul

You should receive three fuses in the mail tomorrow.

Rod.

Fiiiiinally!

Rob's mail got to me weeks ago, but last night was the first time I had the time and energy and the borrowed soldering iron all in one place. The job I did of soldering it on wasn't wonderful - I had no wick or solder sucker to remove the excess solder, so I smoothed down the previous blobs as best I could and soldered it onto that. But it's working now! YES!

Funny, but I got used to not having the display in a way; I was glad I'd given my major playlists PINs and had memorised the top level of the playlist menu. When Kate said "Can you get to my playlist" I was able to impress her with Down Down Right Right Right Right Right Down Down. It's better than staring at the player trying to find things at 100Km/H...

Thanks, Rod! My .sig is true again!

Have fun,

Paul