hairybadger
Bricoleur
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2012
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- My Satellite Setup
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- My Location
- near Geneva, Haute-Savoie, France
My genuine Openbox S10 recently started refusing to boot. I turned it on with the power switch,"boot" came up on the front panel and then nothing. I switched it off again, back on again and nothing at all displayed. The box was just over two years old and thus out of warranty. I'd read that failed capacitors are common with satellite receivers and so decided to give repairing it a bash myself.
Opening up the box (I tried to preserve the "warranty void if broken" sticker but I guess it's designed to fall to bits at the slightest disturbance
) I could see that one largish capacitor (22uF 400V) had leaked brown gunk at its base and another (1000uF 10V) was bulging noticeably. I found that with the postage costs I was better off ordering from a French supplier, Mixelec. I couldn't find direct equivalents but since with capacitors the voltage rating is the voltage tolerated by the component, having a higher rating doesn't hurt (much like fitting higher speed or weight-rated tyres to your car). I thus ordered 22uF 450V and 1000uF 16V replacements, the temperature rating being the same as the originals. Both are stated to be "low ESR", but God only knows what this means in practise. Although both replacements had the same diameter as the originals, the second one was slightly higher. This was not a problem here - the S10 has plenty of room in the case.
The new capacitors arrived after just over a week, the packet having a Hungarian stamp on it
Getting the old capacitors off was a bit of a problem - the old solder was very hard, although it's possible that my soldering iron (23W) is just a bit weedy. Soldering the new caps into place was relatively simple, although I paid attention to put them in the same way round as the originals. I'm not sure that the solder I have (2mm 40% tin) is the best for the job but I think it will do. The Openbox now boots again without problems. I *suspect* it boots faster than before, but I can't think of any reason why this would be the case and it might just be psychological.
The only problem (assuming it doesn't now spite me by catching fire) is I was looking forward to having an excuse for buying an up-to-date version of the Openbox
Opening up the box (I tried to preserve the "warranty void if broken" sticker but I guess it's designed to fall to bits at the slightest disturbance
) I could see that one largish capacitor (22uF 400V) had leaked brown gunk at its base and another (1000uF 10V) was bulging noticeably. I found that with the postage costs I was better off ordering from a French supplier, Mixelec. I couldn't find direct equivalents but since with capacitors the voltage rating is the voltage tolerated by the component, having a higher rating doesn't hurt (much like fitting higher speed or weight-rated tyres to your car). I thus ordered 22uF 450V and 1000uF 16V replacements, the temperature rating being the same as the originals. Both are stated to be "low ESR", but God only knows what this means in practise. Although both replacements had the same diameter as the originals, the second one was slightly higher. This was not a problem here - the S10 has plenty of room in the case.The new capacitors arrived after just over a week, the packet having a Hungarian stamp on it
Getting the old capacitors off was a bit of a problem - the old solder was very hard, although it's possible that my soldering iron (23W) is just a bit weedy. Soldering the new caps into place was relatively simple, although I paid attention to put them in the same way round as the originals. I'm not sure that the solder I have (2mm 40% tin) is the best for the job but I think it will do. The Openbox now boots again without problems. I *suspect* it boots faster than before, but I can't think of any reason why this would be the case and it might just be psychological.
The only problem (assuming it doesn't now spite me by catching fire) is I was looking forward to having an excuse for buying an up-to-date version of the Openbox
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