Pioneer Elite Pro-510 problem - Page 87

Alright, everything is back together...

I just need someone to confirm the position of this pink/black wired connector before I plug it in...

This was taken from the front of the set looking towards the back.



I think I have it right, as that's the way the copper naturally fell, but to double check, I pulled the diagram from the manual. Looks like the black wire is attached to the ground (pin closest to the deflection yoke plugs).



Digging a bit deeper, that plug is "CN751" so I looked for another diagram of it and sure enough, the ground pin is clearly labled as the rear (double pin on the board)



I'm pretty sure I have this right, but still would love confirmation =)

Thanks,

-- Dave

Looks correct to me!

Joe

Here are some pictures from last night if anyone is interested:

http://dave.oc7.org/gallery/main.php.../pioneer510hd/

-- Dave

Joe, does the HV distributor on your 610 look the same as this?



Thanks,

-- Dave

Wow, this thread is quiet on the weekends.

Update:
So the anode cables do pull out of the distribution block quite easily as Joe had mentioned, so I removed the entire deflection board, took it down to the garage and got in there with rubbing alcohol and my air compressor. That board is as clean as it will ever get now...possibly too clean, but we'll see.

The compressed air was really good at cleaning/drying out all of the pin wells in the PCB, and getting in tight places I couldn't get with q-tips/etc.

Board is now just drying for safety purposes... it's in a warm, dry corner with air blowing around it.

I should have some TV tonight!

-- Dave

All that said, I didn't try pulling them out at all at the time, and I just went out there and tried doing so and found that indeed they do come out. So my apologies. They have a bulb on the end of each wire that snaps into some clench, inside.

b

It will only fit properly one way, which is the correct way. As long as you are not forcing anything, it should plug in only one way.

b

It's the same.

Sorry, Dave... having two fully-functional Elites... I don't check this forum as often as I used to... Let's get yours that way too!

When you put everything back together, be very careful about putting the focus wire back. The connector breaks easily. Also, I noticed some minor tweaks in the 520 over the 510... For example, they added an extra ground jumper from the left side of the deflection board to the A/V chassis. I retrofitted a ground like that on my 510. Lastly, make sure the ground from the deflection board to the CRTs is good. I put it on the red CRT.

I think it's actually good in a way that you unsoldered the red sync cable from the red CRT board...I've noticed this has a tendency to become loose with lots of fiddling like this... a nice new solder connection there and you wont see the screen jumping from red to green intermittently. I had that problem as well.

Joe

Bob,

You wouldn't remember with all the traffic on here...but on my first inherited "free" 510, I wound up buying a new deflection board...and it didn't come with cables...so I knew the cables came out.

I guess if you were not in that situation, and tugged on them...it would seem like they were not made to come out. But, a firm steady tug and *snap* out they come...intact and ready for action.

No sweat... and no apologies required. I just wanted to prevent Dave and all the others from cutting into that anode boot on the CRT and causing themselves HV weirdness and pops on top of their existing issues. Messy silicone, coolant, and fragile CRTs.... Been there done that.

Joe

These work for the 510...may also work for other models...

Tip #1. If you don't have the digital tuner optional module. Most don't... you can disconnect the power wire and choke from the vertical PS. It is not needed. In fact, one of the differences between the 510 and the 520 is these parts and the surface mount inductor for it are removed. Not needed! See pic.

Tip #2. After you perform tip #1, you can also remove the screws from the DTV compartment at the top right on the back of the set (area with vent holes). Remove the cover, remove and throw out the plastic insert and viola!... A really cool place to store your remotes and keep them away from the kids. No clutter!

Just don't blame me if you forget where you put them... like my friend did recently. :-)

Enjoy...

Joe

OK smarty, tell me the one little choke that can also remain out of the board between the x10 and the x20 series!

(hint - if you study the circuitry, you see that in the x10 series it didn't actually do anything anyway because it is designed direct shorted! On the x20 they evidently discovered this, as it was totally left out of the x20 series of the original PS boards!)



Along with the x20 series doubling up on the gray wires over the x10 series...

b

Ok, Bob. For the correct answer, what are you offering as a prize? How about two calibrations for the price of one if you get out to the northern VA area? Ohhh... and official recognition as "smarty pants" would be cool either way...lol.

Here is the answer:

On the 510 vert PS board, there are 5 *exposed* coils in the "secondary smoothing block".
On the 520, there are only 4.

At the top right of the 520 power supply board, right next to connector E7 and J107, the coil labeled ***"L214"*** is missing. On the back, the trace runs through both points on this coil, making it useless as you said.

Other observations:

The DTV power components E8, J219,J218,J217,J205,J225,J224,J216,J215 are also gone... the DTV option was apparently canned by the arrival of the 520.

This means you can use the 510 PS in the 520... but not necessarily vice-versa... and I have done so with my 520... works great!

Good enough?

Joe

So... TV works, just finished watching all of Kung Fu Panda in 1080i.

Did my best to get some stills, though I didn't pause the movie while snapping pics...kinda waited for freeze frames in the animation and hoped for the best.

Detail (Note, these are all with black levels set at 2 in the menu, everything else centered):





So I think it's a success... It's going to need some fine tuning at some point, I've gotta get some questions down on paper and get them to Mr. Bob and see what if any of things can be adjusted, or I just have to live with them. eg: with grid convergence screen up, I have about 1-2mm wavering vertically... possibly something that could be fine tuned in the SM, but nothing that is actually visible with content playing back. I just want that convergence screen to be perfectly still...don't know if it is possible. Would also like to do some physical o-scan redux as well at some point.

That is all for now.

Thanks for the help,

-- Dave

I tested while the box was unplugged, it fits perfectly in both orientations.

-- Dave

Dave,

Considering where you were, this came out awesome! Congrats! Enjoy it like this for awhile... you may want to leap to the shim mod, crank the detail reg, etc...

or just leave it as is... most people would be happy with it just the way you've got it...

Just my $.02...

Joe

I'm OCD as all F---

This thing has lots of tinkering left in it =) ...and lots of potential I bet.

That said, I am perfectly happy as-is...but knowing that it can be futz'd with more means that I will futz with it more I'm going to have to talk to Bob about the shim mod, and time required via phone consultation to get everything re-scaled/converged via SM/etc...

I'm going to try and grab some pics of the handful of particulars that still bug me and see what you all say about them. First order of business might be minimizing some of the blue blooming... Blue is perfectly focused, but I guess due to the color wavelength and human eye response to blue, it's got a slight halo, about the width of the projected beam all around it... I think it's impossible to remove, but it is possible to minimize it some... maybe even shrink the beam width as well?

I might point my webcam at the TV tomorrow and convert the output to B&W so that I can get a better visual on the blue beam's focusing in both optical and beam focus on the CRT itself...see how perfect I can get it.

I also need to see about that other 510... if Zip gets it, we have most of the makings of a Mr. Bob DC tour...

-- Dave

Actually, not perfectly. I just went out to my 610 and examined it, and it fits perfectly in the proper direction, but in the reverse direction you have to "push it". By that I mean push about twice as hard, so as to make the pins bend just a little bit in wrong directions to get the 4 pins into the 4 holes.

Oh, it goes in all right, just not easily. Not hard, grant you, but not easily either.

That's my definition of "forcing it".

If you'll look at the pins themselves, they are not all equally spaced between each other, and neither are their holes in the plug itself. The pins have unequal spacings between them, very specifically indicating the proper order of things. Reversing that order is NOT equivalent to keeping that order its original way, mechanically! And of course you verified this electronically, with the schematic before proceeding, which is the right way to do things.

It's subtle, but those unequal spacings between the pins need to be paid attention to very closely, and heeded. Doing so will put the black wire closest to the set of 3 sweep yoke plugs, where as you said, it belongs.



Good thing you double-checked this, Dave. You're doing fantastic, but reversing it could have added to the coolant leakage setback situation you caused by being on auto pilot a few days ago, and additionally cost you your deflection board, possibly your PS board, one if not all 3 CRTs, and who knows what else woulda lit up when you turned it on again? Let's not find out the hard way, shall we?



Great that you have rared back a little from your overconfidence going in, on this project. Some things DIYers do on automatic are relatively easily remedied, others will total your set. You've been hella lucky so far, dude!




I once had a plug on a Runco where the original brand they rebadged DID have equal spacings between all 4 pins, it was very loosely bundled and as such totally unpredictable on re-plug-in, and since I had not marked it at all going in, I DID get it wrong on the re-plug-in.

Bad move, took forever tracking that one down, once I had turned the set back on and instantly fried a few things. It was over my head at the time, and I had to let someone else pull me outa that one.

You were right in being worried and concerned about this.

"Be afraid. Be very afraid..."

--Geena Davis, in The Fly

b

Absolutely right! Joe wins the Robert A. Heinlein Lollipop Award! ("A lollipop to the first one to find a gliche in our calculations..." on their star drive journey in one of his early Sci Fi novels)

Actually that only applies if you are trying to use the original Pioneer ATSC tuner, their first of its kind HD tuner. Which nobody bought...

For all normal people, without that ancient HD tuner that nobody bought, those boards are completely interchangeable between the x10 series and the x20 series of PS board.

I have actually ceased resoldering everything leading to it except one cap that parallels the main power to it, tho I think I'll cease doing that too. Nobody uses that STB anymore, there are much better tuners out there by now. Anybody who wants me to keep those solder conns going because they actually use that add-on HD tuner, please let me know ahead of time if I am resoldering your PS board.

b

Awesome shots, Dave! My compliments to the chef!



That built-in internal pattern sucks in many ways anyway, don't fret over it. It's missing the top 3" of pattern (is black up there), the lines are far too thick and hot for use in high precision convergence, and you can use your own grid if you wish just by pressing the Yellow button on the remote while in the service menu.

So don't even use the internal pattern for convergence. Send in an AVIA grid for SD, and if you want the finest convergence possible, rent my Accupel HDG 2000 for a week or 2, and get in touch with me to find out the fine points of converging on a Pioneer. It is different from any other brand on its intricacies and fine points. And simply its personality. I had been doing them for years before I finally hit critical mass on all that you have to know, to really dial it in.




b

So tonight was beam and optical focus night. My corners were fuzzy, even in the pictures I uploaded last night. That is all fixed now.

I noticed it is a lot easier to converge the corners of the display when everything is in focus.

I'll have to upload some larger pics when I get a chance...I'm watching planet earth now, finally

-- Dave

Great! It's really sensational in HD.

Did you use the Cantilever Technique for the optical focusing?

You mentioned beam focus. Does that mean you went in and did an astigmatism alignment as well, or do the scheimpflug on any of the guns?

b

I used the 3 focus pots by the red CRT, split the red and blue guns off the center convergence cross. Adjusted focus pots till I could get the most definition in the horizontal scan lines, then slid the screen a few inches right and did red/green lens focus basically using the cantilever method, paying close attention to screen corners. I could see the horizontal scan lines prior to my optics cleaning, but they weren't as well defined as they are now, so I figured I'd fine tune.

The focus is as good as I'll be able to get it, and it's going to be plenty good enough until we can get you out to DC.

I need to get in there one last time, as I almost have a perfect RGB split for skintones as well. I think I need to dial back the green screen pot and blue just a smidge to get a nice and proper white balance. And by smidge, I mean, hold the trim pot and only think about moving it...that would probably be enough.

If you open up a photo editor and get a color sample of the white text and gray bar of the last image below, you'll see that the color values are about:

White:
R:93.1%
G:95.0%
B:94.4%

Gray bar:
R:50.4%
G:51.8%
B:51.8%

That's pretty darned close to white...but a little cool color-wise, needs just a little red. I'll fix it tomorrow, but first have to investigate exactly what temperature kelvin CRT color balance is supposed to follow, and see if that holds true for CRT HDTVs as well. You might actually be able to answer that one for me. It looks like for this TV, it should be somewhere around 7000K? Then I need to go find which one of these test pattern files I have is supposed to be gray...

Here are some samples from tonight in slightly higher res. Unfortunately this isn't rendered imagery, so the source material itself starts out a little soft, but you can get a pretty good idea. There's also a tiny amount of blooming in the lower left corner where the pause icon is. I can clean some of this up in multi-point convergence, I just haven't bothered with getting the far corners perfect yet (I think my convergence is slightly different when using the test pattern vs having a full screen image up...the corners seem to move a little).








-- Dave

There's a huge learning curve to doing the grayscale properly, but I'll give you some of the fine points:

D6500K is the color of tungsten when heated to 6500 degrees Kelvin, or Kelvins. So at 7000 you were close. 6500 is the correct number.

The color of fleshtones, when you get to that, will not be aided by the grayscale, as the grayscale has to be done on b/w material, which forms the foundation of the color and the image structure as well. The fleshtones and all colorations and scenes that contain color are in the domain of the color decoding, not the grayscale.

That's why grayscale patterns are always b/w. The best way to get a pure b/w pattern when running your connections as component, is to disco the Pr and Pb, leaving just the Y in your component input. Everything will then turn to pure empirical b/w and you can use nearly anything with the right content for your grayscale alignment, as long as it has the proper levels of gray, black and white.

On the white, you only go to 80IRE, not 100IRE (IRE=%), because the white goes non-linear when run that high in the light levels. Blue cannot keep up with red and green at high light levels, so 80IRE is the highest you go.

You're needing to run your Black Level at plus 4 - on most of your model of set it's plus 12-15 by the time of its present age if it's a Pioneer - and your display is still not capturing all the shadow detail that's there.

The way I do the realignment of the biasing of the guns I will discuss with you on our phone consultation, which you have already paid for. I am glad to discuss it with you there, and feel you can handle the kind of carefulness it will take to bring off the ideal alignment of the gun biasing - bringing the BL in User back to zero, while still nailing the shadow detail perfectly.

This is information that could get others in trouble deep, so I will be keeping it to myself in this thread. That means only between you and me and those who choose to discuss it with me in a consultation setting, like you, where I can stay totally and reliably involved in the process at your end. ISF doesn't teach this, I am the only one I know who does.

b

I think having my black levels at 2-4 is plenty high.

I took a couple dark scenes in movies last night and there's no increase in shadow detail past 2 really. I only gain additional brightness if I push it past 4, but the added brightness is not necessary and doesn't add to the picture. 2 is perfect with lights out, 4 is perfect lights on, anything more and you start to sacrifice dynamic range.

I'll see what afternoons are free for me this week, and we can setup a call for dialing things in further.

Thanks,

-- Dave

I am glad you have nailed it for your current internal settings.

I realign everything in there so when you are at zero/midpoint, you get exactly what you have now, but with User settings at midpoint all around rather than at 2 or 4.

You have set your settings exactly right for where your set is presently set up internally, re. sm settings and energy to your guns.

Magic happens to the grayscale when everything is set up so properly internally that the Black Level in User is zero/midpoint and everything is perfectly balanced, like you have it now. It's the "sweet spot", where everything within your User menu is at its optimum.

Many owners have to have their sets at plus 12-15 at this age. When you do that, you go so far off from centerpoint that typically your blacks turn green on you. It gets slewed to one direction or another. You'll see in my screenshots where I had one calibration where when I got there the grayscale was all magenta!


b

Yep, that's exactly where my 510 is. At this point I've begrudgingly learned to live with it.

It's funny, cause someone on either this thread or the don't dump your CRT thread mentioned that the Pioneer's are a tinkerers dream. I've come to realize I'm not a tinkerer. I don't have the patience to sit in front of the TV for 4 hours tweaking settings, trusting my eye. Maybe if I had the tools to measure grayscale levels and such, but I don't, so I'm scared to DIY. I think I've read enough "warnings" about painting yourself into a corner to do anything other than clean my optics!

I wish you that like to tinker much success. For those that can afford to hire Bob, huzah! As I'm in neither camp, I'll just read these threads and glean what I can.

Heh... I've only had this set a few weeks... I'm afraid to count the hours I've spent working on it already, especially if you count recovering from my screw-up.

Actually...

~2.5 hours soldering
~hour for collective dissassembly/assembly (multiple times added up)
~hour cleaning optics/focusing
~2 hours cleaning coolant from the deflection board (whoops)
~2 hours to properly drain/clean/fill the red coolant reservoir
~hour for various convergence sessions
~hour of random manual reading/menu adjusting

That's a good 10 hours so far... and that was just so I could get it back to ~factory... I can still spend time doing the shim mod and sitting on the phone with Mr. Bob re-converging everything in the SM afterwards.

That said, this is still less painful than rebuilding motors.

-- Dave

I forgot to post this note I found on the TV the other day when I got home from dinner.

My roommate is a pretty funny guy =)



-- Dave

Has he seen the awesome job you've done on it, the awesome pix it is now producing???

Some roommates just don't know how good they have it...




b