Amstrad DRX550 stuck in standby

easysat

Anyone have an idea what causes this fault? The box came from fleabay and was supposed to be new. It was working on arrival and worked OK for a couple of hours and only started misbehaving a few days later.

Does Sky allow the guarantee to be transfered when a private individual sells their Digibox? I think the seller was honest about the condition as the box was nickel on arrival inside and out (cables in sealed packets, etc.). Going straight to a Sky dealer and relying on the guarantee would be a lot simpler all round than posting the box back and forth....

pc::

rolfw

Sky's guarantee of the box is not transferable as far as I know.

Have you tried disconnecting from the mains and rebooting, or perhaps even trying a forced update?

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snap

You probably have a case to return to the Ebay seller, as it is probably faulty and most likely will never wake up.
This fault can arise from a lightning strike nearby.

easysat

Thanks for the comments.

Switching off and rebooting doesn't seem to change things. The red standby and blue Sly LEDs come on and that is that. On screen message is the no signal one.

I will try the forced software download at the weekend when I can connect to a dish. I tried powering on with reset button pushed down and no LNB connected at work but this doesn't do anything as far as I can tell (no other LEDs come on).

If the lightning strike theory is correct, I can't really blame the seller as the box was working on arrival.

pc::

jimbo

Is it not linked to a dish at the moment?

Jimbo

snap

If you have a 'No signal' message, the box is not stuck in standby.
You don't have a dish connected?
Don't re-start the box by pressing back-up button (forced update) unless you are sure it's getting a good signal.

easysat

The box is at work so it's not connected to a dish.

When I tried it at home with a dish, the only way to make the green light come on was to disconnect it from the mains for a long time and then plug it back in. This gave the "no signal message". If I left it on, it went back into standby and stayed stuck in standby: neither the remote control or the ON button would change this.

Anyway, I'll try it again on the dish at the weekend and be more specific about the symptoms. I'm not really in a hurry because my existing Panasonic box at home works fine (and so I think this proves the dish and cable are OK).

pc::

jimbo

Did you switch it off at the mains when you disconnected it?

Jimbo

easysat

I got the box working again by resoldering some joints on the main board.

The dodgy joints were on the main power supply lines: the +3.3V, +5V, etc. supplies are routed from the PSU connector via tracks on the component side of the board to ferrite beads. On my DRX550, the ferrite beads weren't very well soldered as no solder had wicked up through the hole.

All the current was passing through a plated hole down to a pad on the solder side to which the lead of the ferrite bead was soldered. I suspect an intermittent contact in the plated through hole was the problem so filling the hole with solder and making sure the leads were well soldered to the pad on the component side cured the problem.

pc::