[mythtv-users] I think my HRHR Prime died...

[Stephen Villano]

OK, let's preface this with, I am a certified electronics technician.

OK, a VOM, pretty much *any* VOM will be fooled by ripple.
DC power in ancient and familiar for me days of analog circuitry, had
mains frequency hum. Most failed to notice, those that did got extra
filter caps and occasionally, a massive inductor coil in a pi circuit.

Today, we're in the digital age. A 5 volt supply supplies, with luck,
5 volts. What is of import is, sampling rate of the VOM, which is why
I previously mentioned an oscilloscope.
One can end up with 2.5 volts *real* DC and a full five volts of
spikes that result in no useful supply to a logic circuit.
At 2.5 volts or so, logic goes into an indeterminate state, which
means getting confused,senile and eventually locked of destructive,
depending upon the logic usage.
I've personally witnessed many hard drive physical failures, courtesy
of a lousy 12 volt supply that measured fine with a cheap VOM, but
looked like pure DC spikes on an oscilloscope . Later, better VOM's
had RMS, which was *really* revealing, as there is no sine wave in DC.

Hence, my suggestion at first to try a new power supply.
No need for detailed comprehension of two years and change of
electronics school, no 40 years of experience and no requirement of
more advanced electronic diagnostic equipment that you'd also have a
massive learning curve to learn how to utilize.
Based upon my experience and many, many, many other users of the HDHR
Prime, swap out the power supply.
If you're as proficient as I am, replace the defective filter
capacitors. I've done that, via measures that'd give my fire marshal a
stroke, but the caps got replaced.
Assuming that you also own an ESR meter, to find the defective capacitors.
Mine is aging, when it fails, I'll go straight to replacement.
The cost isn't worthy of the benefit.

On 9/3/15, Jerome Yuzyk <jerome at supernet.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Thursday, September 03, 2015 04:35:01 PM Jay Foster wrote:
>>
>> The last power supply that died, when I went to unplug it, it burned
>> me.  I was lucky it did not start a fire.  The HDHR is a great product
>> (I have four of them), but the power supplies are their Achilles heal.
>> I would gladly pay an additional $5.00 or $10.00 per HDHR for a better
>> quality power supply.
>
> What is the alternative? Are these commodity wall-warts or can they be
> substituted?
>
> --
> A little of Jerome's MythTV World: http://mythtv.bss.ab.ca
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