HR10-250 Complete death?

[nabsltd]

I thought I was seeing the overheating issue, and so I opened my HR10-250 and blew out the fairly large dust accumulation.

When I started it up again, I was getting digital audio dropouts, which seemed to indicate power supply issues, from what I have read here. I opened it up again to see if I could see anything obvious, and when I tried to restart it, I got nothing but the fan running.

So, I replaced the power supply with a known good one, and still have the same issue...the fan runs, but no hard drive spin up or front panel lights. If I disconnect the IDE cable from the hard drive and then plug in, I get hard drive spin up but still no front panel lights. This leads me to believe it's a mainboard issue.

If anyone else has seen this and has some simple things to check, I would appreciate it, as I'd like to save the recordings (not hacked, so they're still encrypted).

[Matt L]

Did you jostle the ribbon cable going to the front of the unit? That can cause all sorts of problems.

[nabsltd]

I don't think so, but I can check.

If I did and I re-seat it, would that be a fix, or does it cause permanent damage?

Thanks.

[litzdog911]

Yes, it may have caused permanent damage on the motherboard. Ouch.

[TyroneShoes]

I don't think so, but I can check.

If I did and I re-seat it, would that be a fix, or does it cause permanent damage?

Thanks.This is the one single thing that Weaknees cautions the hardest against. They may be overstating the situation, but they claim that if you power up with the ribbon cable loose, that it can brick your Tivo. One would not think that would be the case, but one would also think that if anyone knows about what could go wrong when digging around inside a Tivo, Weaknees would.

[nabsltd]

Well, unless "jostling" is incredibly subtle, the white ribbon from the motherboard to the front panel stuffed into the connectors at both ends with no issues.

Since it's just like the power-supply ribbon connector, I can see that pulling it out even a little would show some contacts, and there aren't any.

It would appear that I now have a doorstop.

The real pity is that six months more and it wouldn't matter, as hopefully the new DirecTV TiVo unit will be out by then.

[stevel]

Try 9-12 months. But seriously, I would not hesitate to get an HR2x now. You've been missing a lot without one.

[Matt L]

Agree, why wait? It won't hurt for long...