So I was playing football with some friends, and the … oh, wait. Sorry, I wasn’t supposed to repeat that. Um, I have a basic Sony home theater receiver that won’t power up. It was working fine one day, then just wouldn’t turn on the next. Nothing out of the ordinary happened that we know of—it sits in a well-ventilated but enclosed rack, so it wasn’t moved or kicked, no electrical storm (it’s also plugged into a surge protector), no pop when it turned on then stopped working, nothing… it just won’t turn on.
I’ve checked the plug (tight in the wall, firmly attached to the unit) and the outlet (other things work fine in the same receptacle) and that’s about all I can think of. I don’t see a fuse anywhere (so far), so that’s not an option yet.
It’s not under warranty, and probably not worth more than a couple hundred bucks, so taking it somewhere to have it looked at is probably not cost effective. Therefore, I figure it can’t hurt to crack open the case and see what I can see. Or can it?
Don’t receivers have capacitors and magic smoke-generating doodads that should be avoided? If it doesn’t turn on, and the aforementioned power connections are as visibly intact as I make them out to be, is there any hope of a layperson having a shot at fixing it? The only two things I can think of are finding a burnt-out fuse or a loose connection to be re-soldered. Is there anything else I should look at that a quick trip to Radio Shack would help with?
Some recievers have a reset that involves something like holding down the power button while plugging the device in or holding down the power button on the remote until it resets. There should be something in the manual to tell you which to try, probably in the troubleshooting section. Sony is pretty good about putting their manuals online if you can’t find your hardcopy.
I’d dug out the manual to see what the troubleshooting section had to say. Unfortunately, it was completely silent on the no power situation. It did have directions for resetting, which I’ll give a whirl.
Egad! That’s exactly why I thought to post – I knew that televisions were NOT to be opened by the uninitiated. Do the same hazards exist inside a stereo receiver?
ETA: this post was written when mks57’s post still referred to ‘televisions’ instead of ‘such devices’ – thanks for clearing that up!
I have seen a few recievers that had a simple fuse inside the case. Usually one of the inline kind that are a little white unscrewable case over the glass tube fuses.
Solder eating weevils aside, what would make a connection suddenly become “loose”? Modern electronics doesn’t always fail with the glory of a smoke plume and hail of sparks, as if conceived by Irwin Allen, himself.
There is a possibility of a board mounted fuse going bad, but if you have no experience with this sort of thing, the electronic trolls aren’t happy when disturbed, and will bite. Most shops will charge a reasonable fee to diagnose the problem, and assuming a high cost proprietary IC isn’t fried, you’ll get your unit back for under a C note.
This is the kind of thing I’d take a look at for free, if a friend asked.
Unfortunately, most of today’s electronics have an embedded microprocessor somewhere in between the power switch and actually turning the thing on - especially anything with a remote control.
It’s not hard to take a meter and trace along from the power cord to the fuse and into the power supply circuits, but the reality is that if the fuse is good and the unit appears to be stone dead, it’s probably not economically repairable as all fingers will soon be pointing at that microprocessor.
