put the cotton bud where?

I did actually write a blog post yesterday, but I was so busy I forgot to post it.  It was quite generic, so I'll save it for next week.

So I have a bit of an update on the PVR front.

It's a bit weird, though.

Apparently, the losing the time when going into standby is actually quite a common problem with the 9200 Humax box.  Indeed, it's commonly called the --:-- problem as that's what the display shows instead of the time while in standby.

There is also a solution.  But it's a bit weird.

Basically, the front panel isn't just a display, it also houses the clock components that show the time and, more importantly, wake the machine from standby when it needs to record.  These components consist (excluding the display itself and among other minor bits) of a chip, a large capacitor and an oscillator.

What has been diagnosed as happening is that the components are, very roughly speaking shorting due to impurity build up on the surface of the actual Printed Circuit Board (PCB) these are all attached too.  It's a little more complicated than that, from what I can make out, but the solution is, in essence, to clean the circuit board.

Now it's not really dirt that's the problem, but it's easier to think in those terms.  And being a PCB you can't just stick it in the washing and give it a scrub.  To clean it (and I'm going to give it a go) you have to use cotton buds and surgical spirit (basically meths without the minerals).

The reason I'm going to give it a go is that the official solution is to phone Humax and get them to send me a replacement board, which costs about £30.  I can't honestly believe the board costs anything like £30 - the main components I mentioned are purchasable online for less than £2.00.  Hence why I'm going to give it a go this weekend.

By the way - it also potentially does relate to the power cut.  A couple of people on the forum I looked this up on reported it happening after power cuts.  And given the point of the capacitor is to keep the clock going during power outages (it's obviously powered normally when plugged in) I suspect that the brown outs caused some sort of problem that's led to this issue.

There's a lot more detail with instructions on this forum - http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1274989 (just in case someone has stumbled across this blog entry via a google search or similar).