• The forum software that supports hummy.tv has been upgraded to XenForo 2.3!

    Please bear with us as we continue to tweak things, and feel free to post any questions, issues or suggestions in the upgrade thread.

HDD Start Up Circuit

bkcjones

New Member
I am new to this forum although I own a HDR Fox T2 and a Foxsat HDR and over the years I have read many of the posts. I have been having crash problems with the Fox T2 for some time and have consulted this forum to try to diagnose the problem. Although power cycling with the rear switch usually got it going again the crashes were happening too frequently for me to do nothing about it, or at least try. First off, I bought a power supply capacitor kit and changed the capacitors on the power supply. I watched some of the recordings that were already there but while I wasn't watching properly, it crashed again. After that the recording could not be played back and I got a "scrambled channel" message from any of them if I tried. So I deleted them all except for one. I transferred this recording to an external USB HDD and then re-formatted the internal HDD. I then recopied the recording from the external HDD back to the internal HDD. It still would not playback. I then recorded a movie from Film 4 successfully. and that would playback. I played it several times without a problem. I still have no explanation why I lost all my previous recordings. Incidentally while I had the downloaded recording on the USB drive I connected it to my PC (using EXT2MGR) and read the TS file into my favourite video editing software, something I have done many times before, but the editor software would not recognise the file format.

Now to the embarrassing part. I had previously updated the software to the latest official version (1.03.13) and intended to load the custom software once I had done all the hardware related fixes that were recommended. The last such was the HDD start-up capacitor replacement, so forgetting the old saying that I learned many years ago "don't fix what ain't broke", I carried on to remove the surface mount capacitor off the main board. Unfortunately the negative connection pad came off the board with the capacitor. It is not easy to see where the PCB tracks go in this area but I could see that the pad was connected to a 1K resistor. I scrapped off the solder resist on the track leading to this resistor and connected the new capacitor negative lead to it, and the other lead to the positive intact pad. I powered up the Fox T2 and it booted up okay then displayed a TV channel on the TV screen as normal. However there was no access to the HDD. The Media remote button did nothing, and in the system menu the Data Storage option was greyed out. Obviously the connections are not correct, but without a schematic, and least of this area of the PCB, I cannot fix it. Normally I would buy a service manual to find this out, but Humax do not publish one. If anyone can help with this, I would be most grateful. Thank you.
 
Thank you for your message. Yes, I had a look at this thread, but it did not give the actual schematic and connections around this capacitor. Even the data sheet for the regulator was not helpful in this regard. Any other suggestions??
 
Okay, well thank anyway. Maybe someone else can help. Otherwise, I guess I'll have to try and trace it out myself from the board. Might be tricky. Thanks again.
 
I had previously updated the software to the latest official version (1.03.13) and intended to load the custom software
The former was pointless if you intended to do the latter, seeing as the latest CF is based on 1.03.12.
 
Thank you for your message. Yes, I had a look at this thread, but it did not give the actual schematic and connections around this capacitor. Even the data sheet for the regulator was not helpful in this regard. Any other suggestions??
There's a sketch of the circuit attached to comment #197 in that thread.
 
Thank you for that. With the help of that schematic I have now repaired the self-inflicted damage I did to the board and it is now working again. Thanks guys for all your help, tracing out the circuit would have been a nightmare. Basically I should not have touched the capacitor in the first place as they are very difficult to remove, at least with the pityful equipment I have. Now I just have to fix the crashing problems.........
 
Back
Top