CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Spanky Ham · Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5643 Location: Comedy Central

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

Well I've been looking over the diagrams and making some notes on this chip and even though it appears that it may be possible to retrieve its data,frankly I dont know if its worth the effort. I mean how many boards are there right now in need of this chip? John seems to have his going, Curt I think said he had one, haydon's board but his hasn't been verified as it being this chip and his symptoms are different, and there seems to be more spare YA boards surfacing. So even if this was accomplished..........who needs it? Especially since were talking hours and hours of work to just try to get the data, then if we get it, we need a chip to put it on. But I will say that I may have already found a chip that might work if we got the data, but again, more hours of work.

Alright, lets ask the question. How many here think that they would like this to go further? I expect very few responses... Smile

CIR Engineering · Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 3:02 pm Post subject:

Well, I said from the beginning that this problem with the cdx305-127r is being blown out of proportion and I was strung up for the suggestion. Now we have a potential solution and no one is jumping up and down asking for further development Rolling Eyes

I think the fact is that there are probably enough of these chips in circulation. Granted, they are in short supply, but there aren't all that many G90's in existence to begin with. But more parts machines will surface so more cdx305-127r chips will become available as well.

I PMed macgyver655, and a replacement does seem possible, but with a lot of labor that is pointless to spend if no one actually needs a work around for this chip.

craigr

HaydnG90 · Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 1356

Well I for one, am in need of a chip. Curt's best assessment of my YA board is that the IC421 is the problem. It does exhibit the unstable shaky image and a complete lack of response of geometry adjustments. When John replaced OliverG's chip the symptoms disappeared and he now has a fully functional board.

Obviously I'm in a minority here as my G90 failed a year ago and so have a vested interest in getting my board repaired, but I'm of the opinion that it's not a case of if, but when the chip will fail. Afterall Sony used up their stock of extra chips in very quick order.

OliverG also had to wait a year for his repair, so that should give you some indication of how readily available spares are for this board. There is still a lot of value in these G90's, so unless you plan to scrap the projector when the chip fails, anyone currently running 1, 2 or 3 Shocked

G90's should keep a spare handy. Thumbs Up

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

HaydnG90 · Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 1356

To be honest, when the board failed the most obvious symptoms were a complete loss of calibration data eg geometry, magnetics etc, as if everything had reset to factory. I don't think I focused on the shake at all, or at least I didn't make a mental note of it.

I sent the board to Curt along with the old and a new Dallas chip (I was hoping this was the culprit, but it turned out not to be) and he has done extensive testing on his test mule. He confirmed the set did show shaking with my YA board.

Of course the only way to be sure is to replace the IC with a known good chip.

Fireball72 · Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 7 Location: Germany

Hello,

just discovered this thread....

John mentioned the serial # of IC421 of his two failing boards were #003A01E. Terry told that his two boards with malfunction had the same SNR of IC421.

Did I get that right? Are there non-working IC421 with another SNR# ? Are there defective SNR# 040A02E? My SNR# of IC421 is 836A01E (works).

Maybe we can write down the SNR# of all probably defective IC421.

Why? If it is only one batch and we can prove, Sony should do something… (but probably will not).

Regards
Axel

RogueChili · Joined: 31 Mar 2008 Posts: 162 Location: Westfield, MA

CIR Engineering · Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 1:35 pm Post subject:

I have four YA boards here right now; one is in my theater G90 (good), one is in my test G90 (good), one is Haydn's bad YA, and the last is a YA from Curt that is bad, but with a good IC421 (he thinks).

The theater projector is serial number 200663 (late production) with less than 1200 hours on the chassis. The IC421 is serial number 003A01E. With only 1200 hours on the chassis this IC has not seen a lot of service yet.

My test chassis G90 is serial number 200120 (early production) with about 6500 hours on the chassis. The IC421 serial number is 836A01E. This IC has obviously seen a bit of service an is still good.

Both Curt and Hayden's YA boards have IC421's with serial number 003A01E. I don't know the history on Haydn's YA, but I know the one Curt sent me was damaged due to an accident, not a failure.

So as it stands now, I have four YA's. Three have good IC421 chips and two of those good chips are serial number 003A01E. I have another good YA with an IC421 of an earlier serial that has lots of hours and is still strong...

Just adding some data.

craigr

CIR Engineering

HaydnG90 · Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 1356

From what I understand all the failed IC421's so far have been from the same batch ie SN 003A01E. In fact I think the G90 that John got from Curt with the mystery failure, which turned out to be this IC421 problem, had a serial number close to mine (my G90 is a mid production unit 20005XX with 1500 hours on the chassis). This gives credence to the thought that there may be a batch related issue here. Perhaps a weakness resulting from the programming suggested by Craig.

JohnHWman · Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 1:12 pm Post subject:

Some more information about IC421 : I just found a Receipt that was written by Sony at San Jose when I sent my first defective YA board for the 'shaking image' issue (the one from the second G90 I bought, from Curt). Guess what ? They wrote that they just replaced IC421 IC (and also stated that this IC is not longer available !).

I said that they should have changed IC431 too (CXD2309Q) but this was just side-solder job effect ! They only changed IC421 (CXD305-127R). I just did the same for Oliverg's YA board and his board is back to life !

Then, IC421 is the one to replace to cure the 'shaking image' issue.

Best

John

P.S. Hello Fireball72, nice to read you, long silence time Wink

For all, this guy is the one from who I bought my first G90 unit Very Happy

(still in action in my HT room Wink

)
You're right, the IC421 issue may be due to a production batch failure. The problem is that there is probably not too many batch of CXD305-127R ICs all around the world since there is only about 1K of G90 units ever manufactured Evil or Very Mad

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 3:44 pm Post subject:

It looks like I'll be getting a couple of G90s that I can/will part out, and they will have working Ya boards in them. They won't be cheap, figure on $1000 each, but if this whole 'reverse engineering' of IC421 doesn't work, it might be the cheapest viable option. Just throwing it out there.

Sets should be here in 2 weeks or so.

CIR Engineering · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 4:41 pm Post subject:

All right...

I just tested Curt and Haydn's YA boards.

Curt, your board throws an error code green 10 and then green 11. Is this what you saw?

Haydn, your board boots fine but this is what it is doing here... firstly, no adjustments in the projector have any affect on the image; NONE. Centering, white balance, focus, whatever does nothing. Occasionally the image jumps, but is mostly stable. Is this what you were getting with the YA in your machine? The only thing I can do with this YA is change the internal frequency. Also, after a while the image went and I got an orange error 87. Upon rebooting everything was the same.

Also Haydn, I just left you an email with my phone number. Call me ASAP so we can go over this.

craigr

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 4:53 pm Post subject:

Yes, that's what I saw. I slipped with a scope probe, which caused that. Before that, the set fired up, but the image was shaking. THe various controls did have some effect to the various adjustments that they controlled, making me suspect that MAYBE IC421 was OK on my board, but the last Ya board I had here had shaking with no control of any part of the image, and John in France confirmed that IC421 was bad.

I have also had random shutdowns with IC421 being bad. That's why I figured maybe my board is a parts donor, try swapping by IC 421 to Haydn's.

HaydnG90 · Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 1356

CIR Engineering · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 9:04 pm Post subject:

Well sh*t. I just spent about five hours on this being ultra careful... now with Curt's IC on Haydn's board I am just getting the red 88 at the very first step of initialization Sad

This is the worst case I could have come up with.

I can't believe it after all that time and the amount of care I took.

I will look at it again tomorrow if I have time but this sux Sad

Sorry Haydn.

craigr

Tom.W · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 6635

I think Sony owes the apology... Rolling Eyes

CIR Engineering · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 9:36 pm Post subject:

Well guess what... I got it working.

However, the image shakes and blinks like crazy. Curt, that's the problem you had on your board that you were trying to track down when you slipped with the o-scope right???

If so, that means that the original problem with your board curt was the 421 and I just proved it by wasting my day Wink

There is a possibility that Haydn's IC421 is good, but they might both have been bad!

craigr