42" Hewlett Packard Plasma TV powers up but doesn't give a picture
 

Hello Everyone today I bought off the salvage pile at work a 42" Hewlett Packard Plasma HDTV Model Number PL4260N that when I got it home to try it out it would power up like its supposed to except for it wouldn't give a picture. I googled the symptoms and supposedly the Y-Sustain Board or the Z-sustain board was possibly the problem with one person reporting that his TV was brought back to life when he simply replaced the 4A 250V Ceramic fuses in the Y-Sustain Board (which when I tested the fuses on my Y-Sustain Board one of the fuses tested good yet and one of them tested bad using a resistance test) so I went to radio shack to see if they had the fuses I needed and all they had were the glass fuses and no ceramic fuses (apparently this TV will only power up if you have 4A 250V Ceramic Fuses in the circuit, anything else and it refuses to power up) anyways so I check the local Ace Hardware and all they had were the large fuses and not the smaller fuses in the 4A 250V Ceramic type, so I checked out Menard's and they didn't have anything either, and I'm running out of places to source these fuses because it seems that Mouser, and digi-key doesn't carry them either (the original fuse was made by LittelFuse and I checked their website and they still make the fuses) but for some reason no body sells them...

Any information about this TV and this issue or where I might source some fuses for this TV would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Levi

...

Thanks, Although when I looked at the panel (although I wasn't looking for it though either) it didn't seem like it said anything about LG on it, so maybe it is just a bad fuse? Or I guess I could just search on ebay and see if I can find that Y-Sustain Board and see if I can a replacement for cheap enough.

It's probably an LG PDP42X3 panel. The fuse blows when the IPM shorts - never seen one with a blown fuse that didn't have a shorted IPM. Don't pay too much for a replacement board - they're a $100 (sometimes less) set here.

If your going to replace the chips yourself, buy them from Coppell TV. His stuff always works when I buy from him. There is also a possibility that once you get a chip or board replaced that you have a worn out panel. There will be lots of colored dots that you cannot adjust away. Coppell TV can also repair the board for you as long as no one has worked on it previously. As far as fuses go yes you can use glass fuses. I'm not sure where that nonsense about it only powering it up with ceramic ones. Thats a bunch of BS. The replacement IPM's come with glass fuses and work just fine

I second all that has been said above. When I was in the repair business, I also sent my LG YSUS boards to Bobby over at Coppell TV. He's a good guy and he stands behind his stuff. For the price of the ICs and the time it takes to replace them, it was cheaper for me just to have him do it, and it's guaranteed to work.

Well as far as the glass fuses not working in this set goes, that was my observation not what someone told me, because I got some fuses from Radio Shack and installed those fuses into the back of the unit and tried to power it on, I would hear the relay kick in like its supposed to when you first plug it in and you have 2 blue lights lighting up on the main board on the back of the TV but then after about a minute the relay would kick out and the second blue light on the main board (the blue light furthest away from the power plug) would then shut off and then the power button won't respond to power the TV on, but when I had the original ceramic fuses installed (even the blown one) the TV would work just like its supposed minus the picture. So I don't know what the deal is with the TV and why it seems to want to prefer the ceramic fuses in the circuit over the glass ones in order for it to power up.

Anyways where abouts on the Y-Sustain Board is the Voltage Regulator ICs? I'm wodering because I'm pretty confident in my soldering/repair skills that I think I could probably to the repair myself, and save myself some money.

When you say "they're a $100 (sometimes less) set here" are you referring to the resale value of the TV itself? If so I think I would rather do the repair work myself and save me some money so I could still make a little money off the set if and when I get it going again, as I've only got about $4 into the set currently and that was the price I paid to buy the TV off of salvage at work (Goodwill), plus the fuses which were only a couple of bucks.

Well currently on epay there are some replacement boards up for sale on there but they want over $50 for them but free shipping, which my mom would have a cow if I were to pay over $50 for a part to get an old Plasma TV going that I might be lucky to get $100 out of once its going, and the DIY Repair kit isn't much cheaper. :sigh: I thought this would be a pretty simple and cheap repair and an easy flip but its turning out that I may have bitten off a bit more than I could chew, if the repair kits would of been say around $20 or so, I could of easily justified that expenditure to my mom, but since the repair kits is nearly $50 I can't as easily justify that expenditure to my mom even if I can still possibly make $50 off the unit reselling it...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LG-42PC3D-UD...0AAOSwuhhXVZKR

Here's an ebay listing for a functioning YSustain Board that came out of a TV with a busted screen, and was pulled and tested in a functioning unit and it does work, but they want $57 for it and free shipping which like I said my mom would have a fit if I spent this much on a part for a Plasma TV that I'd be lucky to make $30-$40 bucks off of once I got it going and sold it, but of course that being said I guess its not really my mom's business how I choose to make money and $40 is still quite a large profit margin considering that some of the other stuff I've fixed up and sold in the past (mainly old tube powered radios and record players) only had a $10 profit margin for me.

...

Well like I said there is a functioning board up for sale on eBay right now for $57 and free shipping, which I could attempt to get that board on thursday when I get paid if its still available that is, although I'll have to worry about my mom trying to question me about buying a $57 part for a 10 year old Plasma TV that I may or may not be able to sell for $100 and make a little over $40 off of it, if I can sell it. So why would the screen be bad on this thing already? I've dealt with plenty of regular non-plasma type LCD TVs that are over 10 years old and are still working just fine with the original screen assembly, so what makes a plasma screen assembly different from an LCD screen assembly that it would have such a short lifespan?

...

Well My Plasma is a HP just one of the ones you dealt with was and you said that the HP you dealt with still had a good screen which with that in mind, I would tend to lean towards mine more than likely being good yet as well. So like I said on Thursday when I get paid I'll see about getting that board ordered and installed in the TV, and if it works I'll already have a buyer for it which will be my housemate, but as to whether or not he'll want to pay $100 for the thing... well that's another thing, and his loss, considering this is a 42" set and would be perfect for his video games, but if he wouldn't be willing to pay the price for it then like I said its his loss, and I'll just find someone else to buy it who will appreciate the set.

By the way, what causes the voltage regulator chips to go bad on these Y-Sustain boards? And wouldn't a functioning used Y-Sustain board eventually fail the same way as the original one in my unit did eventually (even though it clearly hasn't yet)?

I've had used boards that failed shortly after installation. I have also gotten boards from ebay that said they were tested and arrived with a blown fuse. And some boards will work for years. They fail because they are run at their limits and get very hot, Best not to try a chip replacement yourself the first time. I took me awhile to get it down without damage. It's not as straight forward as you may think. A bad or partially shorted screen of buffers on the verge of failure can also cause boards to fail. LG made buffers hold up better than Samsung buffers by far. Samsung buffers usually fail first and take out the Y-sus and then it becomes very expensive very fast.
IPM's usually fail with a large bang that immediately blows the fuse but the set will generally stay running. Usually only one goes bad but sometimes both go bad.

OK, well I guess I'll just have to try my luck with a used board from ebay and hope for the best, as I certainly can't afford nor justify spending over $100 to send the board in for repair to Coppel's TV Repair as suggested by one of the other members here, seeing as I would have more wrapped up into this unit than its worth then if I did that and wouldn't be able to make any money on the TV If I went to sell it, in fact I would be loosing money if I sold the TV at only $100 when I had over $120 into the unit, I'd rather make $40 than loose $20 when I went to sell the TV. So yeah, I'll just hope that the Y-Sustain Board doesn't go out when I get the replacement installed (although if its working when I sell it and it goes out on the next person who owns it, then its their problem and not mine.)

These old 42" Plasma sets rarely make more than $80 - $100 here.

LG Plasmas (and many other brands use LG panels) of this generation and earlier often have tired/worn out panels. You will still get a picture, but there will be random red dots everywhere that are very noticeable on dark scenes. Sometimes you can tweak them a bit and get a usable picture, sometimes there is no happy medium - Adjust far enough that the red go away (or at least are minimal) and you get dark dots on bright scenes.

IPM replacement is not easy. It's a multilayer board and the ground pins will soak up all the heat without budging. Preheating the board and low temp solder help.

I don't spend any money or much time on these kind of sets anymore - they're just not worth it. If I don't have a good used board available (that I pulled myself from another junked set, not from ebay) I don't bother.

I see, well I'll see what I can do with this unit anyways ('m not going to be selling it on here anyhow, I'll be selling it locally as I wouldn't trust shipping this TV with as big as it is.) I may even just keep it as a spare, as my LCD TV I have in my Bedroom that I got from my aunt has some dead pixels in it but otherwise good sound and picture so I could use this in place of my current unit once it goes bad completely.

A little over a month ago, you faced the same dilemma with a Westinghouse 32 " set, where the cost of boards and other parts approached or surpassed the value of the set.... how did that work out for you?

jr

Well I'm just going to pitch that westinghouse tv unless I can find a replacement board for the TV for super cheap on ebay, which it wasn't that the parts were extremely expensive it was that they didn't have any of the boards for sale on ebay at the time and I didn't want to invest in an ESR meter to try and figure out which caps in the power supply/inverter board were bad because yes a bare naked ESR Meter is only $15 on ebay, what scared me the most about those meters is that I could accidently short it out. Anyways, if this would of been a CRT TV it would of been more worth fixing I think, it seems that the flatpanel TVs tend to be like brand new cars where they lose half their value immediately after you buy it, whereas CRT TVs seemed to of kept more of their value over time.

And the biggest problem is that with these flat panels is that its hard to know whether or not they'll be worth fixing or not unless you take them apart and get a good look at the insides and when I see a Flat Panel in the salvage bin at work its not like they're gonna let me take the TV apart to see if its got blown capacitors in the power supply before I buy it off the salvage to see if I want to buy it or not, that's kind of what the repair business is all about, though isn't it, you're taking a chance that something may or may not be worth fixing to sell, its not just flat panel TVs that are that way, but also the old CRT TVs are that way as well and so are the old radios, when you buy something that's in unknown working order to fix it up and resell it, you're taking a chance that it may turn out to be a piece of junk that's not worth your time.

If that is your main concern, for only a few dollars more, you can get one in a fairly basic looking plastic box:

https://www.amazon.com/SainSmart-Poc...ords=esr+meter

Or a nicer looking box wih some handy short clip leads:

https://www.amazon.com/Huhushop-Tran...ords=esr+meter

Either one of these, properly used, should substantially improve your chances of finding bad caps on these sets... bulged and oozing appearance does *not* tell the whole story.

just my 2 cents,
jr

Being an impatient cheapskate I paid $5 more than the (2 month shipping time :thumbsdn:) Asian sellers were asking for a bare board that had fast shipping...Then I made my own box from a piece of plexiglass leftover from my college senior design project. Mine gets exposed to steel wool fibers etc. and has never shorted or been damaged in the year + I've had it...Granted my case does a decent job keeping that crap out.

I'll admit that I probably should invest in one of those ESR Meters, but then again like I said if its only 15-20 dollars you're probably going to be paying for something that's of poor quality build wise because that's usually the way it is in the electronics world, the cheaper the price is, the lesser the build quality and thus the more likely it is that it will be dead in about a year or 2.

Well I broke down and ordered an ESR Meter, and its was one that was in a case already. it was $35 but I figured it would be worth it, because it also had Mosfet, Transistor and resistor tests on it as well besides ESR Tests for Capacitors and it can test capacitors in circuit. And Jr. Tech, the ESR Meter I ended up getting was the one that was in the second link you posted in your post on here.

I suspect that you will be pleased when you discover all that the tester can do. If you have not seen it yet, here is a link to a YouTube video of a short demonstration:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b3dPBnYixs4

Contrary to his opinion, I find the ZIF (zero insertion force) socket to be very useful... about a month ago I went through a bunch of random semiconductor devices that were just thrown into a coffee can over the years and sorted out npn, pnp, fets, scrs, thyristors, diodes... very useful device!

Here is a pdf by the original desiger... likely more than most need to know, but an interesting read nonetheless:

http://www.mikrocontroller.net/attac...er_eng104k.pdf

jr

OK so when measuring a capacitor's ESR rating what kind of measurement should I be getting if the capacitor is good, and what kind of reading should I get if the capacitor is bad? I'm wondering because I'm going to see If I can take another crack at that Westinghouse TV.

000

Depends on the size, voltage rating of the capacitor and quality of the capacitor, but lower esr is better. I printed out this scale as a guideline, and find it useful.

http://www.electro-tech-online.com/a...003-jpg.84737/

It is also useful to compare readings to those taken on a new good quality capacitor of the same size and voltage rating. On large capacitors, say under one tenth of an ohm or lower, you may need to zero out or just subtract the test lead resistance to get a better reading.

jr

OK, so which leads should I use on the ESR meter to test the Capacitors? It has 3 leads a red, yellow and a green lead, and I'm assuming that I just need to use 2 of the 3 leads for the ESR test.

Well I think I might of found one of the faulty capacitors in the westinghouse TV that was causing it not to power on, it was a 150MFD 450V electrolytic capacitor that measured at about 135 MFD and ESR measured at a whopping 8.5 ohms. So I think that might of been why the TV wasn't powering on considering it was the main filter cap for the power supply, at least I think that's what it is.

EDIT: I retested the capacitors again, and there were a few capacitors that did actually test off from where they should of been, so it seems I will have to replace some capacitors on the power supply board for the westinghouse tv.
C46, C45, C59, C49, C11, C69, and C17 are the ones that measured unacceptable.

Be sure to keep this in mind... the chart that I linked to above is typical for new caps, some increase is normal over useful life. Caps that have 10 times or more than typical new value are suspect.
I have even seen new (cheap) caps that were about 2 times the value stated on the chart and they seemed to work ok, while higher quality brands usually beat the chart number by a significant margin.

jr

The capacitors I checked measured over 8-10 Ohms some even over 30-50 ohms, the ones that measured only .05-.75 ohms I basically said was good. although since there aren't that many capacitors in the power supply circuit on the Westinghouse TV, I figured I'll just replace all of the capacitors and be done with it. I plan on replacing them with Nichicon caps (the originals were Nippon Chemicon caps.) I put in an order without actually submitting the order and it will be about $15 to get all of the caps ordered for the Westinghouse TV and that price includes shipping.

Y-Sustain Boards on eBay
 

Hello everyone, I just did a search for the Y-Sustain board I need for this TV (The HP Plasma) and there are a couple on there with buy it now or best offer prices, with one going for $62 buy it now price or best offer and another one going for $74 buy it now or best offer and yet another one going for $94 buy it now or best offer, and I'm guessing that all of these prices are way too high for what they ought to be, so with that in mind what would be a good price to offer if I was to use the "best offer" option to try and get the board? I was thinking $25-$30 or so, and yes all three of these boards are reported as being functioning boards by the sellers who said that they came out of TVs with broken screens but otherwise were fully functioning because they removed the boards from the broken TVs and tested them out in a good TV, and I was thinking $25-$30 because of the fact that they can't guarantee the board's longevity since it is a board that is known to malfunction after a while, depending on how hard the TV is used.

What do you guys think? Any input and suggestions would be appreciated.

You aren't going to get a working board for $30. If you could get one for even $50 I'd be surprised. It's a high demand board since there are so many TVs that use it.

Don't forget, you might be able to recoup some of your money by selling the bad board as a core. At least that's what I used to do, I don't know if they still have any value.

I guess I'll go for the cheapest one for sale on ebay and then just resell the old board and see how I come out. I might even just offer them $50 and see if they bite since its not too far off of their original asking price of $62, I'll have to wait until I get paid tomorrow to do anything though.

Here are some pic of tired panels in LG plasmas. These are 42V7s, one generation before the 42X3 in your HP set. I've had many 42X3s in the same condition.

One of these was working as found, but likely dumped due to the dots. The other needed a Y-Sustain (which I had on hand) which got the set going again, but it doesn't produce a watchable picture (at least for me, I've seen people tolerate worse). You can see someone watched a lot of FOX sports.

The dots vary with scene content and vary over time. They do seem to get better (but never go away completely) when the set is left on for a while.

There is a degree of adjustment on the Y-sustain board, and sometimes they can be tweaked to produce a better picture; With these two adjusting gave you a choice or bright dots or dark dots - no happy medium.

I have read that the dots can be caused by bad caps on the sustain boards, but I have tried recapping them in the past and it did not improve the picture.

The pictures of those "dot" issues don't look that bad to me, I was expecting dots the size of dead pixels in an LCD TV but those "dots" are barely noticeable, I had to look really hard at those pictures to even see the "dots" you were talking about. I haven't checked eBay recently to see if there are anymore Y-Sustain boards for sale that are under $80 or not (as I would like to try and keep the repair costs on this TV down as much as possible so I can try and make at least a little money off of this TV when I go to resell it.

The dots are the size of individual pixels. The white picture with the FOX sports logo is supposed to be a full white screen - The colored pixels shouldn't be there and represent pixels that are not lighting, or not lighting fully. On the black picture with the FOX sports logo it should be a completely black screen, the lit pixels should not be lit.

I sold one of these for $60 after other buyers rejected it at $80. Some people don't notice the dots, or are willing to live with them if the price is low enough.

Stick it on the shelf for a while until another set you can get a board from turns up for the right price.