I fixed my JVC AV-36980

A few months ago... several actually. My JVC AV-36980 went out, no reason it just wouldn't turn on. I wanted to fix it but my life was too hectic at the time. Over Christmas break my sons and I finally got around to fixing it. After rolling this heavy unit and entertainment center away from the wall I googled the model number and found this web site. I was amazed, it looked like my exact problem and it looked like something I could do but was a little scary. The good thing is that it would only cost me $1.75 to try.
So first I opened the unit and found these dusty contents.The red arrow points to what I would later discover to be the bad capacitor know as C926.

After vacuuming the main board and back of the unit (being careful to touch anything as a working cap might have a lot of volts in it even after I let it sit for an hour with no power) I found C926 and saw a slight bulge and discoloration. This made me feel good. So I headed to Radio Shack to get the part. After going to a small mall Radio Shack I learned there are different types. The one at the mall had only 2 trays of caps and did not carry what I needed so I went to a larger one with 3 trays and found the 35V 1000uF part.

I needed to get to the bottom of the board to remove and replace the old part so I disconnected the speaker cable (remember which direction it was and where it was) then lifted then slid the board out of its track and put it on its side.
I noted which side was + and - and verified it with the marking on the board then had my son pull on the cap while I heated up the leads one at a time making careful not to overheat the board. This is a through hole part on a board that might be multi-layer. It took several heatings to get the thing all the way out. In other words, when I heated the top lead you could not pull it all the way out with the bottom still attached so you had to heat the bottom while the top hardened.
After getting it out the board showed discoloration. We replaced the part leaving this one about 4mm from the board in case it blows at a later time.


The pictures above where taken with my new DIY protein strobe. The following with the work lamp. This picture shows the cramped work area with the board on the side, I circled the bad leads, use the large trace 'zag' as your landmark.

After soldering in the new part, again being careful not to overheat the board. I have the long leads I need to clip.


When I finished the TV worked again. I think my wife was surprised to see me fix it.
It took longer than 30 minutes but was easier than I expected.

I'm not going to die just yet

After all of the stress at work, my grandmother passing away, and a ton of other things I felt like I was having a heart attack. I tried doing the guy thing and ignoring it until it went away but the flutter feeling was becoming a distraction and casing more stress. So last week I got an ECG. It turned out to be normal as was my blood pressure and pulse. That was the first night I felt right in 3 weeks so I went to the gym the following night. Then got on the roof to put up Christmas lights.

My son, Dylan, took these and I forgot to set the ISO to 100 when I gave him the camera. The camera needs a warning light when you haven't used it > 4 hours and the ISO isn't working for the camera. ISO too low is easy to detect when everything is a blur and you hear the mirror flip up for too long. ISO 3200, these pictures, is harder to detect.

I did manage to get some right ISO pictures from the roof.
One thing I noticed up there was that my neighbor in the back parks his car in the back yard near his porch. It is hard to not notice as he does this often. When you are standing on your roof you really ask yourself why. Does he frequently unload something and that location is closer to the destination? Afraid someone will steal it? Or, I like this one the best, he loves his car so much that he wants to remind himself how smart he is by parking it in plain view all day long, perhaps even sitting on the back porch for hours just looking at it.
I didn't actually bring the camera up there to spy on my neighbor, it was just a target of opportunity. I really wanted to capture the sea of suburbia that you see from up there.

Nice Park Job

Great job parking your car. This doesn't even look like one of the 3 types of cars that I see doing this:

1. $1,000 car with $10,000 of upgrades
2. Old person that is just lucky to have not hit something
3. and of course the > $30,000 I'm so proud of my car... car

New Office

Well, I spent my first full week in my new office. The sound of the fridge has been replaced with a loud AC unit and chatter from half the building. My view is this horrible pattern of squares trying to trick me into thinking I am in a cube. But I m in a pen or stall, since I have a movable door I'll go with stall.
I need to go back into software development so I get an office in situations like this instead of an interior pen.
The pen picture has been color corrected for the ugly green florescent lights that shine above me. I wonder if I will get in trouble if I unscrew some of them. The worst ones are over the support area and they haven't moved in yet. Ghaaaa I do not want to hear support calls all day any more than they want to hear me burp the alphabet.
I liked the old office. It had a window! I guess this is what I get for going into SW test.

This Saturday was rough

I had a rough Friday at work getting things done before the move at 4:00. So I slept in on Saturday to get in a little later than I had hoped to at 11:00. Umm, ahh yeeeeaaah Saturday is a, ummm regular day. Yeaaah it's not like a um half day or anything. And ended up spending about 13 hours unpacking and getting ready for an emergency test in my new cubicle... actually it doesn't have a roof so it is a pen (any small enclosure in which someone or something can be confined) or stall (a compartment for one person in a shower room, toilet, or similar facility). I didn't manager to keep my promise with my wife and go with her to a party at 2:00. So she had a bad day too.

On the way home I get a call from my sister that my grandmother passed away. Wow, what a day.

Since work went so bad on Saturday I have a full day of work ahead for Sunday. Since I am writing this on Sunday night I know Sunday will be rough. It is just sinking in that mom-mom is gone now. I better get back to work so I can get to bed and go to work to work in my new office with my 2 wall pen.

Got a new phone

If anyone wants to call again after the phone was smashed I have a new one. I hear lots of bad things about the Treo/Palm phones, mainly from people that work at Sprint. I had a Blackberry and hated it, it ran no software at the time and the Treo ran everything made for a Palm. The Palm wasn't without its problems but now I have a Sanyo Katana II and I HATE the thing. I had major buyers remorse after getting it. I was not ready to get a new phone but hat a lot of pressure to get one so I got sick of looking and bought it for $200 with $150 off for extending the Sprint contract. The menus on the thing are horrible and how does anyone text without the full keyboard. But the Palm Sprint wants $35o for the Palm device running PalmOS since I didn't want to pay an extra $20/month for data. I hate cell phones.
So after that short rant... you can call me. I will not be calling people until my work life stops creeping into my personal life so much I cannot even figure out this phone.