When you’re the proud owner of a beast of a projector like the Sony HW65ES (£2800 in 2016), you are understandably upset when it stops working. In the case of [Wettergren] it appears that a lightning strike in the Summer of 2021 managed to take out the HDMI inputs, with no analog or other input options remaining. Although a new board with the HDMI section would cost 500 €, it couldn’t be purchased separately, and a repair shop quoted 1800 € to repair it, which would be a raw deal. So, left with the e-waste or DIY repair options, [Wettergren] chose the latter.
Suffice it to say that taking one of these large projectors apart is rather an adventure, as is extracting the input PCB. On this board some probing showed that while the HDMI 2 port showed some signs of life, with its DDC lines functioning and the EDID readable. The HDMI 1 port had a dead short on these lines, which got traced back to a dead Sil9589CTUC IC, while HDMI was connected to the Sil9679 IC next to it. With this easy part done, the trick was finding replacements for what is decidedly not an off-the-shelf component, but fortunately EBay came through. This just left the slow agony of microsoldering to replace the dead IC, which ultimately succeeded.
After the second repair attempt in May of 2022, the projector is still working in December of 2023, proving that a bit of persistence, a bit of EBay luck and a microsoldering bench with the skills to use it can bring many devices back from the brink to give them a happy second life.
Good on you. I really love these victories. The world needs more repair and less e-waste. As Grandpa always said (about dead equipment) “What have you got to lose?”
HDMI codecs are awfully finicky. I have replaced dozens of them on PS4’s, and they keep dying for stupid reasons (and the occasional lightning strike too)
I have spare parts, 30+ cm in diameter quarzt lenses from old theater spots. Any ideas what can i build with it? They are parts from an old Berlin based theater spot manufacturer.
Fun fact: Watching a movie on your projector after you repaired it yourself results in a dopamine rush far greater than that experienced after upgrading it with a new gold plated quadruple-shielded HDMI cable!
The Ikea effect.
I had a tv power supply go out back when TV repair shops were still barely a thing. It cost about 80% the value of the TV to replace.
Reading this article it almost seems like the quotes cost to repair would be, and bear with me, kinda almost fair. I mean if you bill skilled labor at maybe $100/hr, it might be a 1-2day job especially if they had to source the oddball ICs as well.
Also a question: what does it mean that the board was 500E but not available separately ? If it isn’t available the cost is irrelevant.
Always thought that microsoldering involved tiny magnet wires soldered to a BGA chip or something along those lines. In contrast, drag soldering is kinda fun and scratches an itch in my brain.
Thanks for publishing the details. Got the same projector. Now I will acquire some of the ICs, just in case.
Good job but there are a few to tips I learned about these big QFP’s.
TO desolder, take a scalpel to the leads and cut all 4 sides. Remove the useless lump.
Then removing all the leads is easy with the soldering iron, as they have no thermal mass, and nothing keeping them there. Also, less heat stress on the PCB.
TO solder down the new one, first tin all the pads with leaded, put it in place with a nice load of liquid flux, and run the soldering iron along with no extra solder, the flux will take the heat in and melt the solder.
Clean off the flux after with Flux-off! or similar.
I already damaged pads by cutting such IC pins. I prefer a heat gun to desolder them: less mechanical stress on the delicate PCB.
My first video beamer was a SONY, with only 800×600 resolution it cost the equivalent of 3000€ in the early 2000s. After a few years it stoped working. The ballast of the lamp was defective. It would have cost about 200€, already very much for a HID ballast, but Sony also refused to sell it to me, but wanted about 600€ for the repair. Nearly the same money which a new, brighter Medion beamer cost.
Unfortunately there were none of the guys left, I knew from my first holiday job there in the late 1980ies.
For me “Sony” translates now to “so nie” which is roughly german for “never again”. The deliberate weakening of the CD players to cripple them in playing “burnt” CDs was another part of the puzzle.