The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 479

Yes, it's swap and play method.

Great. thanks. Wish me luck!

Yes. The hardest thing to do is to open the case. Take your time, read the various posts in this thread and give yourself an hour to get it open without breaking anything. Once you have it open it is very easy to replace the old HDD with a new HDD. You will probably find your PAL needs blowing out the dust which will help keep things cool. Good luck and give it a try. I am no super fixer and I would say anyone can replace the HDD.
Tom
By the way the longer SATA cable I bought and used simply unplugs from the circuit board and old HDD. Then the new cable replugs into the same spot on the board and into the back of the new HDD. If you choose to simply replace your HDD the only other connection is to umplug the power cable from your old HDD and replug it into the new HDD . Go for it.

Great, thanks. It does sound simple. So the only other extra wiring you did for the externalizing of the HDD was the longer SATA cable, besides a couple of holes (I can be good at that)? I’ll have to make sure the fan is working as well.

Also, as I understand it, the purpose of the external drive is for ease of storage for archiving programs. Without getting too technical, is there any way to convert the file formats to something else that can be saved to a DVD?

Unfortunately (and fortunately), I am heading out on a vacation shortly so I won’t get back to this for a week or so. I am excited to dig into this. Thanks very much for your help.

1. If you look at the pictures you will see that the hole needed is created by removing a small plastic tab on the (as I remember the bottom half) of the case at the back. You do not need to cut any holes. Simply cut off the tab and this will create a small gap where the top and bottom halves of the case come together.
2. The main reasons I decided on the external dock are as follows. I wanted to be able to easily change the HDD and I liked the idea of cooling down the internal of the PAL by moving the HDD outside the case. It removes one source of heat inside and it allows more inside space for air circulation. I also like the idea of lessening the stress on the main power supply of the PAL. It may not be relevant but I made the assumption that by doing this the PAL power supply would probably last longer. It is so easy to hook up another dock if that power supply fails and it only cost about $20 compared with the prospect of having the PAL power supply go out that I figured it is a cheap insurance.
3. Unfortunately the file system used in the PAL is a proprietary system and is not readily copied.

More PALDVR Maintenance Issues:

First never ever follow this advice from P Smith: "If you can't move the DUC [device under cleaning] - use liquids; isopropanol, hot water with soap/light detergent works pretty good for PCB from TV, computers, etc. Just be careful, after cleaning using HOT water, give the board enough time to dry out. This is absolutley NOT the thing to do with the PALDVR and NOT ever needed. I have never ever heard anyone suggest washing electronic components as receommended by this poster. I'm quite startled no one picked up on this.

Secondly DO USE a vacuum with certainty that it is safe and will clean the insides of the PALDVR very well. Just don't touch the internal parts with any of the metal of the vacuum. I used the plastic wand attachment. There is no need to get that close to the parts in order to clean out the dust. The only part that needs to be touched is the fan as the dust will cake the blades and fan housing. For that you need Q-tips and a small tooth brush works wonders.

One very last piece of vital info for any of you cleaning the unit or replacing the hard drive. I have experience fan failures in both my PALDVRS when removing the cover and putting the cover back on. It appears that the design of the unit leaves very little room for the cover and fan. Once you pull the fan out of the compartment and put it back in, then the cover, you may hear fan noise and or the fan may not run. Don't panic. This happened with both of my units with the last cleaning. Just remove the cover and reseat the fan. I did this and powered up the unit before I put the cover back on and closely monitored the fan as I put the cover back on. It shut down a few times before I got it right. I had to play around with the fan and the connections one time before the fan powered up again. Be mindful of this as you may forget to check the fan is running when you are done with your work and the unit will heat up quite abit and shorten its life with the fan not running.

More than 5M hits on "Washing PCBs"... done by users, mfgrs, repair centers, etc.

I think we done with the end user experience ... A little of professional advice wouldn't hurt anyone.

P Smith,

Last nite I had my wife take both units into the shower with her and she shampooed her hair and then used shampoo on both units. I have no hair so it was her job. Then she used a dryer on her hair and then on both PALDVRS. Both units now have a rich textured luxurious look about them.

I was a little worried about the hard water we have here, what with lime and calcium deposits we get from our water but I thought no problem, we can always soak the PLADVR in LIMEAWAY or one of the other products on the market and take care of that issue!

Sometimes practical experience trumps professional advice. We have lots of examples of that.

Yes and for the most part they use special solvents and when water is used they have LOTS of caveats and cautions and it is for mostly when something was spilled onto the PCB.

There is absolutely no need to wash the inside of PALDVR unless you spill liquids into it. If anyone P SMith? has washed the insides could they tell us why they found that neccessary? What did they use? I have had mine since they were sold and have never found any kind of build up inside that would require anything other than light vacuuming and the only part that was in need of actual touching were the fan blades and fan housing. Sure take the cover off and wash it if you must.

Also I never did say don't use air, just that it is an option that for many of us is not needed when a vacuum will do.

Hope the sidetracking is done.

We can freely continue discuss the TR-50 aka DTVpal DVR again.

Would this be sidetracked? I unplugged mine for the hot and boring (nothing to watch) summer? I might plug it back in for summer Olympics' ceremonies though! I wonder if my DTV Pal DVR will mess up its TV Guide like last summer for being off for the whole summer.

Not at all.

When you expect to turn it on ? Would you reset it to default this time?

Before Olympics' opening which is Friday, the 27th. I hope I don't have to reset! Let's use this as a test. Last year's was about three months compared to almost a month..

I think there is a good chance that TVGOS will come back on its own. My DTVPal had been unplugged since late May, and I plugged it in Saturday afternoon. I checked it about 7:00pm Saturday night, and TVGOS was back. I really don't believe the length of time it is unplugged has anything to do with it, since it would have no idea how long it had been unplugged. I think what happened with your DTVPal last summer was a fluke.

Mark

Interesting. We'll see... I think the longest time will be about 1.5 months for this summer 2012 due to Olympics. 8/12/2012 is the closing ceremony day. So far, my new episodes return in the end of May. That is when I start using DTV Pal DVR again.

Sorry to get off topic, but did they really discontinue the CM-7400? I was looking for a replacement for my DTV-PAL DVR and saw this option. I know they discontinued the CM-7000 but I had not heard that the 7400 was done as well. Didn't see any mention of it on the website or on the CM-7400 thread.

He meant CM-7000, not CM-7400.

Has anyone come across a situation where the tuners seem to fail. I can home to a wife who complained the DVR wasn't picking up any signal. I tried 2 different TV tuners and get nearly 100% strength on most channels with both. I don't think signal is an issue.

With the DVR, I seem to be stuck in an endless loop of the setup wizard wanting to rescan for channels and finding nothing. It then prompts me to point the antenna and try again. When I unplug or try a forced reboot it keeps coming back to the setup wizard scan prompt. Just wondering if anyone has come across this or if anyone has ideas.

Check your antenna lead. Sounds like its not getting a signal.

I've got two of these acting the same way - tuners can't find a signal. They claim no signal but when I pull the antenna lead from the DTVPal and connect directly to a digital tuner, I get all kinds of channels with great signal strength. On one of them, it showed a program guide but reported no signal on every one. I wondered what would tech support tell me to do - I did a full reset by holding in the power button till the light started flashing. When it was done rebooting - sure enough, I lost the program guide too. Now they both act the same. Neither one can find a signal no matter how good an area I'm in.

It would sure be great to find a fix (or a fixer) for these boxes. I really enjoyed them while they lasted. Neither of these boxes saw everyday use so they're both like new. My daughter has one she uses more often and it's still working great - maybe I didn't use them enough?

Any guidance would be appreciated.
Thanks

Did they have the F208 firmware upgrade?

TVGOS on KVUE in Austin is screwed up again. Nothing after Tuesday. Anyone called?

Seems like the one I knew of was the F206.
Have you got a source for the F208 handy you'd be willing to share?
Thanks!

Post#1, line #2, save as "????.upd" as mentioned in post#13824.

I just fired one up to check - yes, it's showing "F208TALD-N" as the software version and "1011TALD" as the boot strap version.

The links to download from Dish I found using search result in 404 errors - bummer!

I downloaded the:

Link to the most current Firmware F208:
http://www27.zippyshare.com/v/65643705/file.html

Anyway - just to have it.
Edited by Ibentruitt - 7/8/12 at 6:06pm

TALD is Build Config ID (HW variant)
F2.08 - main code version
1011 - bootstrap version
-N - normally functioning NVRAM
-R - broken NVRAM, the device will works OK, but will not save user's changes.

My, this is embarrassing. This one's working now. After repeated attempts to get it to work a few months ago, I pulled it loose and set it aside. Now it's working great. I'm doing a channel scan, it's finding the channels downloading the program guide and letting me watch them again. go figure! The tuner in the DTVPal is better at pulling in stations than the one in the TV!

I'd go out to the motorhome and get the other one to try it again but it's raining right now - first time here in St Louis in 6 weeks - it only got to 98 degrees here today - for the first time in the last 10 or 11 it didn't make it over 100! Tomorrow it isn't supposed to make it to 90! Time to rejoice!

Thanks for your help and when I can drag the other one in here, I'll give it another try before I jump on the forum.

Thanks again, your responses are deeply appreciated.
Don

That is only a soft reset that causes a reboot. Try a reset to factory defaults and then reenter your preferences. The reset to factory clears out a lot of trash that the simple reboot does not seem to affect. Also before you do the reset to factory, unplug it an let it sit for a few minutes so all the electrons can find a home.