Hi all, I repaired a Transporter in September 2016 that had display failure as described here - displays dark but otherwise it worked as it should. Referring to the beginning of this thread, let me give you an advice first: remember the Transporter is only without power when you pull the mains plug! Standby means the displays and outputs are off, everything else is running just like under full power. You may have noticed that the Transporter is feeling warm at all times. So (un)plugging the flat flex between the main and front PCB is not a good idea unless you are sure that the circuitry is not powered. If the flat flex cable is at the slightest angle when you plug or unplug it, you might create a short circuit with very bad consequences. It might be a power regulator IC on the main board that blows (silently) instead of the main fuse. Rather hard to identify and to fix.
That additional 5V power supply board is definitely the culprit in most of these Transporter display issues. It is really an odd design choice. Other Squeezebox devices are just using a 5V power regulator component on their main board and there you go. Why they took the trouble of adding a completely separate board can only be explained by the power draw that two VFDs generate. Each uses ~800mA for the heater wires permanently at 5 Volts - no joke, even if the Transporter is in standby and does not display any content, the displays and their heater wires are permanently powered, just as in every other VFD Squeezebox device. It's one of the things I criticize most about the design. The 55V high voltage that was mentioned before in this thread is not for the heater wires by the way but for the VFD grid voltage, and is indeed created locally in circuitry for each display separately on the front panel board. What that means is that this 5V power supply board in the Transporter is also powered at all times unless you cut the power on the primary side. On first glance I thought, that's quite a -Wun Hung Low -piece, not really matching the rest of the hardware quality-wise. Still, Rapid Electronics seem to be one of the better manufacturers. Customer support appears to be over-average at least, considering how forthcoming they were. Anyway, it appears that switch mode power supplies are just not made to last forever. I understand that many people find it too hard to identify the actual fault in the power supply and prefer to buy a new replacement. Going any further requires additional tools, and dealing with high-voltage components is just not everybody's favorite hobby either. Some might reconsider this because in most cases the repair can be done for a minimum spending. It is one or two of the electrolytic capacitors. In the Transporter I had here for repair, I replaced the two that you can see front row right: 22565 The third one that is missing in the picture measured okay once it was outside the circuit so I soldered it back in - just like the 4-pin connector that I desoldered no idea why. A good amount of heat has left its traces around ZD3, however, that part (a Zener diode) also measured good. What I think might cause the caps to fail is the proximity to this component. Electrolytic caps don't like heat pretty much because their liquid content evaporates when too much heat and resulting internal pressure is present. We are talking about a process that takes years, of course, with constant power and constant heat. After replacing the caps, everything was back up and working fine. I spent about 50 cents for the parts and half an hour of work. My recommendation is to put the caps as far away as possible from the diode, so don't shorten the legs of the new parts, instead isolate them with shrinkwrap, and bend them sideways, as far away from the board as possible, then stick them to the base housing with "hot-snot" glue or whatever you have handy. That's to avoid that any vibration causes the leads or the soldering points to get brittle and fail. There could be other failure reasons, of course, but I think that the caps are the prime failure point because of their unfortunate placement. I'll happily take care of Transporter repairs inside the EU which have failing displays (except Switzerland, sorry, the customs and shipping are completely over the top). I can also replace faded and burned-in VFD displays by original spare parts, using professional equipment and providing high quality work at a hobbyist price. If you want to have your original 5V board repaired, I can at least give you an assessment of the chances and expected cost. Just PM me if you are interested :) +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Filename: 2016-09-02 10.41.49 IMG_1612_Thumb.jpg | |Download: http://forums.slimdevices.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=22565| +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ 5x Squeezebox Classic SB3 2.5x Squeezebox Boom 1x Transporter 1.5x Controller ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JoeMuc2009's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=23131 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=100509 _______________________________________________ diy mailing list diy@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/diy
