Problems with a Pace MSS 301

[Adam792]

I got this receiver today that I bought on eBay.

Now, it works so far as it turns on and will sometimes display channels, I can always hear the sound, and lets me tune it in sucessfully, however there are the following problems:

1) The picture displays entirely at random, it's more often there on horizontal than vertical channels (Astra 1) but often not at all, it just goes black, very faint and rolling across the screen, or crackles on and off. The sound remains on throughout. Moving the LNB cable slightly affects this in that it'll make a good picture do one of the aforementioned things but not the other way around.

2) The front LED panel does not display a thing. Is it meant to?

3) The box makes the most horrible whistling/shrieking noise permenantly. I don't know whether this is normal and I can only hear it due to youth Or if something's going wrong in there?

I hope someone can help me with these, I have a feeling I'm going to have to open the thing up when I dare. (It stinks of smoke and is absolutely nicotine encrusted. )

 

[satelliteman]

Without a doubt, condensers in the power supply. Might be worth doing a psu rebuild. There is also a mod kit for the front display panel.

(I used to repair analogue receivers in my earlier days for Sky).

 

[2cvbloke]

I had a problem with my first MSS300 where the tuners failed cos a small component (not sure what it';s called, a little black rectangle with one leg on one side and two on the other) had blown, initially it had some tuning issues, then just stopped displaying anything than a blue screen....

As for the front display, there's an issue with some of them having solder shorting out between solder pads, a little treatment with a bit of scraping with the end of a flat screwdriver helps, I had this issue too on my first MSS300, and it came to life after the scraping (I think it was on the pads where the VFD connections are)...

Makes me think actually, what did I do with the front panel from that MSS300? Oh well...

 

[Lazarus]

Without a doubt, condensers in the power supply. Might be worth doing a psu rebuild. There is also a mod kit for the front display panel.

(I used to repair analogue receivers in my earlier days for Sky).

Condensers, eh?

Of course, in my day they used Leyden Jars.

 

[Adam792]

Thank you all for the help. I ended up returning it to the seller and now have a Metronic Original Box instead which is working fine on Astra and AB3!