CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

Posted on the other site but there's so much chatter it's already on the second page... figured I'd try here!

I snagged a couple of Fujitsu PDS4209 plasma panels on craigslist. The story was that one had a bad input board and the other a bad power supply, but given what I've seen I'm not sure.

Panel one has been worked on - cover's been off and the power supply might have been switched (an extra power supply is in a box along with the panels). It wasn't hooked up, but when I plugged everything in it fired up and ran great - for about 5 minutes, when the picture dropped. The status LED said it still had power, though, and the fans were still running. Pulling the power and turning it back on got it running for a little while, but again it died with the same problem. It seems that quicker restarts have less chance of working, and after playing with it a bit it finally would just blink or do nothing aside from switching to green rather than standby.

Panel two hasn't been worked on. Initial symptoms were that it would turn on, show green status, and display nothing. Sound familiar? That one supposedly had a bad input board, but that doesn't make sense as if it was just the IO that was dead it would light the panel and show the status (as the other does when it successfully starts).

Any ideas? Known common failures on these panels? They're only SD but it'd be cool to get 'em going anyway; they do look pretty nice when they run...

(and an update...)

Quick update: Checked the service manual and it's saying either the power supply or the main board. Have swapped between the two, so unless the same thing died on both there's something weird.

But - they don't behave exactly the same way. One of them does a brief blip - lights the display for a fraction of a second - whenever it's turned on. The other doesn't.

So, now, one always shows green but no sign of life; the other shows green, blips, but nothing. I haven't gotten it to come to life except for those first few minutes. Like a freaking coma patient! Teases you, and then bloomp... Razz

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 2:56 am Post subject:

Have they gone Plaid yet?

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

No, right now they're more of a Steve Jobs style... Smile

One of them worked great for a bit so I know the potentials there. Actually looked pretty damn nice with fifth element running via VGA.

d50q · Joined: 22 Nov 2007 Posts: 118 Location: ma usa

lol on the plaid

im not sure on your set but on the sony i have i had no pic at all until i replaced the ysus board
then i got plaid tv
when i watch the set i wear big thick glasses with a big wad of tape on the nose bridge

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

I had somebody mention that board, but the service manual for these seems pretty sure it's the supply of the mainboards. I'm just trying to source some parts now. Fujitsu told me to go to a service place; one service place said to call Fujitsu and another one said they'd have somebody call me back and they haven't. Still have a bunch of places to check though.

Unfortunately they're industrial / trade show monitors so there's not a lot of them out there.

I'm about to go get a free Toshiba 50" RPTV which probably has the same problem as the 42" Tosh I fixed before - if it does I can fix it for $25 and flip it for a few hundred, which should pay to fix the plasmas.

My other option is to fix the 50", sell both to raise $800 or so, try to flip the plasmas for a bit more, and get a new plasma from the proceeds. But if I was going to do that, I'd want to go bigger than the 42" plasmas, because I don't get HD at this point anyway. I know I've seen 50" 720p plasmas for the low 1ks but that's pushing it.