HD100 power supply repair

[bialio]

The first of my HD100's died last week. It's now spending a few days at my father in laws house for the cap repair - he's way more handy with that kind of thing than I am!

I suspect my second HD100 will die eventually as well, but even if it was a total bust I'd consider the extenders a deal for how well they have worked for as long as they have. This was from the original batch,

Placed : 12/10/2007 06:25:51 PDT

btl.

[Fluffdaddy]

3rd of 4 just went bye bye.

No warning, just went flashing red light on me as I turned it on in the kitchen to cook dinner. I have the cap's I'm just not in the mood to repair it. I was planning to do other home projects this weekend.

Ahhhhh maybe I'll order a 200 and put this in the things to do later box

I hope some engineer lost his yearly bonus for designing these 100 series inners.

[MrD]

Originally Posted by Fluffdaddy

3rd of 4 just went bye bye.

No warning, just went flashing red light on me as I turned it on in the kitchen to cook dinner. I have the cap's I'm just not in the mood to repair it. I was planning to do other home projects this weekend.

Ahhhhh maybe I'll order a 200 and put this in the things to do later box

I hope some engineer lost his yearly bonus for designing these 100 series inners.

It's not the engineers fault The design is fine -- it's the parts in the power supply.

[Fluffdaddy]

Well MrD, I'm sorry I picked on the wrong link in the chain.

I hope the guy/gal that ordered the parts for the power supply did not get their years end bonus.

Better?

[dgschoel]

Mine went south today.

[Fluffdaddy]

I'm getting real good at this, 20 minutes start to finish and back in the kitchen watching Hardball.

When my 4th and final hd100 goes south maybe I can break the 15 minute mark.

[craigap]

Mine bit the dust this weekend. I've seen this thread in the past, so luckily I knew right where to go. 15 min of work and all is good.

[mseiter]

Hey guys,

I'm one of those lurkers that make up the probably the largest SageTV user base. I check the site every few months or when I run into issues. I have been running solid for the last 2 years or so. So my HD100 was the very first shipment when the HD100 first came out got the Power Supply issue this weekend. Starting the clock from the time it went out till I had it repaired and back on-line it was just over 2 hours (thanks Radio-Shack!).

I have to save that I spent a good hour reading other folks comments on how Sage should have fixed all of the HD100's or recalled them or done nothing at all. Seems like everyone has a different opinion.

I am in the camp that since its way past the two year mark, they do not have fix it for me for free. It's a $200 consumer device. Heck, my 2006 car had a repair that the dealer said was 'just a matter of time' and 'we keep lots of those spare parts in stock since they always fail' was not the manufactures responsibility since we were 3k miles past the warranty. Warranty over = mfg does not repair for free. The defect is not burning peoples houses down, it just stops the HD100 from working. Folks have said that other manufactures 'stepped' up to the plate like Dell and HP, well I say when you get that big, class action comes into play so you might as well fix it and not litigate over it. Besides, if you litigate over it, lawyers get a few million and each user get $5 bucks, that doesn't help anyone.

I started on version 3.x and have gotten free upgraded to the current 6.6. I can count on one hand the number of products I have upgraded for free that many times and still use on a regular basis. Way more than they had to for the mark, heck many software companies charge at every single version, and often there is not that much difference that is worth paying for.

So what should Sage do? I'm not mad that I had this problem, just a little frustrated that Sage was not more proactive. I believe that they should contact users who purchased the HD100 and tell them what could happen. In the techie community folks know that bad capacitors are out there, its just a fact of like. Knowing ahead of time let's users prepare for what may happen. No one really knows what the failure rate is, but even if it is as low as 10%, thats still a significant portion of the user base. Tell the group what causes the problem and what their choices are. If I would have know this was coming, I would have spent $3 on an internet order have the caps on-hand when the device died. Maybe a trade-in/trade-up program would work. Order a new HD200 and get $75 core trade-in when you send back your HD100. They can sell the HD100 as refurbished at $85, for that price I would buy one for the guest room and they should at least break even AND they moved another HD200.

Well, back to lurking till the next upgrade or issue.....

[-=Jeff=-]

one of mine went out this past weekend.. Fixed it as I already have the parts

I am thinking of Fixing the other 2 before they meet the same fate

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by -=Jeff=-

I am thinking of Fixing the other 2 before they meet the same fate

I'd recommend at least ordering the parts to fix it. Nothing I've seen/read has led me to believe that these power supplies will do anything but fail. It is just a matter of time. I'm 4 for 4 on having to repair mine (2 for me and 2 for my parents), and many others have seen a 100% failure rate as well.

[dgschoel]

Ordered parts on-line for mine but then stopped by the local Radio Shack and they had 3 of the capacitors in stock. I bought them and in five minutes they were installed and the HD100 was back working again. I will just keep the parts I ordered to fix my other unit when it fails.

[rnewman]

Mine just died.
Two of the three were bad. But I replaced all three.
Easy fix.
Thanks!
Ray

[Fluffdaddy]

Well I'm Four for Four. Unit in Granddaughters room just want FRL.

100% failure rate....wow

good news is I have the caps ready an waiting.

[mr_lore]

I didn't read the whole thread but did anyone ever confirm that these things are suffering from the same string of bad caps that was killing motherboards left and right about two years ago?

Anyhow, mine died too, radio shack hooked me up and now I swear the remote works better than day 1, maybe its something like 1 bad cap = works but sluggish, two bad caps, starts to whine and remote is almost worthless, third one takes it to the grave?

[redflight]

My HD100 died yesterday after 20 months of happy use. I'm so grateful for this thread -- 3 new caps and I'm up and running again.

[JDJinTX]

I've now lost two of my five HD-100's. I knew by the noise that it was a cap problem, but there's no way I could have figured out a fix without this thread.

Thanks!

jdj

[zoundz]

Well mine from 2007 finally died last night. Unfortunately, although the symptom was the normal flashing red light, etc, etc, for some reason replacing the caps didn't bring the power supply back to life. The caps were bulged and the whole thing didn't smell all that good, but I was optimistic up until the moment I fired it up with the new caps and it did absolutely nothing.

So now I'm running with a nice 5V wall wart and all is well. Has anyone got a schematic of the OEM power supply? I'd love to fix it and put it back in, even though the wall wart seems to work just fine. The OEM supply has power to the line side DC after the bridge, but nothing on the output rail. No other components seemed to be toasty, but it didn't work. Oh well. Just my lucky day, I guess. The clutch on my car is crapping out too, so there must be some sort of karmic disturbance in my life these days..

[MrD]

I think there is a 7805 in there or something similar -- that's most likely fried.

[Taddeusz]

Well, my HD100 finally died today. Went to go power it on and the power light was flashing. A quick trip to Radio Shack plus about 20min of work and it's back up and running.

[reggie14]

The HD100 that I had Sage repair last year went out on me again. I thought I had been hearing some weird noises coming from it lately. Does anyone know if they warranty the repairs? Even if they do, I think I'm a couple weeks past the 1 year mark.

So, I'm curious about my options. I've never soldered something in my life, and I certainly don't have a soldering iron. And, even though I work with 80 computer geeks, I don't know anyone at work with both the equipment and skills to do this repair (which is why I've always been so surprised that so many Sage users do the repair themselves). So, I think I'm on my own.

But, before I go off and permanently destroy my HD100, is there actually a market for these things in broken condition?

If there's not, that there's little to lose in attempting the repair myself, unless of course the equipment is expensive. Would something like this be fine for a soldering iron? Would I need something like this to desolder? Are there other tool (besides things like screw drivers, wire cutters, etc), that I would need that I wouldn't have if I haven't done anything like this before? For instance, do I need or want something like this? Actually, it kind of seems like that desoldering bulb, combined with the soldering iron, would be enough, and I wouldn't need the desoldering tool I linked to previously. Is that true?

The Cocoontech page is certainly helpful, it doesn't really seem to give very good instructions for how to desolder- at least, they don't seem complete to someone that hasn't done it before. Can anyone give me additional pointers on how to do that?

I'm not real happy that even the repaired units don't seem to have a very good lifespan. I'm hoping my HD200 lasts longer.