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FEB

13

2013

i "inherited" elias' panasonic TH-42PZ77U plasma HDTV last thursday and only now getting around to finally figuring out what's wrong. the service manual for the 7-blinking-lights error basically instructed me to unplug boards one at a time until the lights stop blinking which would mean the previously connected board was the bad one.

it took me a while to remove the SU and SD boards (scan out up and down) because i first had to remove the side terminal box. there are so many screws, it's hard to figure out what's what, but i finally managed to remove it. disconnecting the SU and SD were pretty simple after that. unfortunately the HDTV was still blinking, which meant those 2 boards were fine, so the problem was with the bigger (and more expensive to replace) boards.

i didn't have to remove the large SC (scan drive) board, i just had to disconnect 2 wires. as soon as i did that and powered up the television, the blinking stopped. that meant the SC board is bad and would need to be replaced. i went ahead and removed it, which required removing an additional dozen screws and moving some frame elements to get the board out.

the 7-blinks broken SC issue apparently is a much discussed topic online. the easy fix is to just replace the entire SC board. there are a few on ebay with varying prices, but all used. the cheapest SC board on ebay is actually a repair service, where you send them your broken board, pay $69, and they send you back a used repaired board. you end paying more because you also have to pay to send them your old board, which might cost an additional $20+ because it's pretty bulky and large. the cost of buying a new recycled SC board isn't that much more expensive. i found a place online for $99 (including free shipping). the good thing with this place is i can return the board if it ends up not working out (but with a 20% restocking fee, which is better than not being able to return it at all).

the cheapest option is to fix the broken SC board itself. the most likely issue (in pretty much every single posting i've read online) is that one of the MOSFET's has short-circuited, causing the board to malfunction. the repair is pretty straight-forward, and i even know which parts to get (5N2307 MOSFET, $11.66), but the actual soldering seems pretty daunting, and figuring out which of the many MOSFET's is busted is also difficult. i could end up making things worse, and then having to replace the SC board anyway.

so even if i do replace the board, there's no guarantee that the HDTV will work. but i'm optimistic that it will. i think i may try the repair service since it's the cheapest option (that doesn't require soldering on my part), and i looked up the price for a flat rate 24x12x3" USPS game board box (provided i can actually find such a box at the PO) and it's around $15 if i pay online so it's not as bad as i thought.

i spent so much time doing surgery on the HDTV that it was already mid-afternoon and i wasn't in the mood to go outside. guess groceries will have to wait until tomorrow! i'm still working on my supply of canned soup, which is pretty awful, so i just want to finish them and then promise myself never again. i also realized they're only 100 calories each, which is really just a snack. that's why for dinner - along with some soup - i also fixed myself a sandwich.

earlier this morning i was toying around with the scheduling feature on windows 7, learning how to auto shut down a PC for client N's project.

with the new dead space 3 coming out (or is it already out?), i'm kind of getting excited for dead space, a game i've heard a lot about but never played. the original dead space came out back in 2008. i've been watching some game play videos, especially that of theRadBrad, which surprisingly is all sorts of funny with his running audio narration while he's stomping dead bodies and being scared out of his mind.

more 10.8 notes: i don't know what mail is doing but there seems to be a level of autosuggestion and autocorrect. i type fast enough that i never see the suggestions, but i've seen autocorrect in action, misspelling typos. i don't know how i feel about that but so far it seems to be fairly intelligent and hasn't corrected anything that wasn't actually misspelled; i've basically given up safari (v6.0.2) in favor of chrome (v24.0.1312.57), but one thing that safari does better is the page turning effect when doing a left/right swipe. that makes sense, since safari is apple's creation, so it shouldn't be surprising that it's snazzier and takes better advantage of gestures. safari also does a better job with pinch zooming, smoother transitions compared to chrome. makes me wonder if i should go back to safari! google allows more extensions though (although probably firefox has the most), and i love my camelizer! (although i just found out it works in safari too!)