Tm7100

[Eurobuff]

I seem to be going round in circles. I have a technomate tm7100. When I put it on sometimes it will work flawlessly, recording for 4 hours. Other times it will be working for 1/2 an hour and it will say “no signal”. If I switch the satellite receiver off and on, it will spring back to life but 10 minutes after will say “no signal”. If I have a desk fan blowing on the receiver, it works. I took it in to a repairer and was told it needs a new tuner but there are no parts for them now. I rang Technomate, and I was told when the tuner goes it goes for good. It wouldn’t work one time and not the next.

Tonight I had the desk fan on it, and it was on for 5 1/2 hours. I recorded something for 6 minutes. Everything was fine. But when I went into the recordings menu. It froze, the sound was breaking up as it was attempting to play the latest recording, and now it’s saying it needs to format the drive.

Question 1, could the hard drive have been causing the problem and not the tuner?
Question 2, I have recordings that I don’t want to lose on the hard drive, is there a way of not formatting the drive? It’s saying now there is no hard drive, even though it’s physically in the receiver

Any help would be really appreciated

[abu baniaz]

The PSU possibly has some failing capacitors. Can you test hdd in your PC. It should still be in fat32 file system and should just work.

[Eurobuff]

The PSU possibly has some failing capacitors. Can you test hdd in your PC. It should still be in fat32 file system and should just work.

Thanks for the reply. I haven’t had chance to take the hard drive out of the receiver yet. I was thinking of getting a new hard drive and copying the old files into the new drive. It has to be ordered though and will take 2 weeks. In the meantime I have put a memory stick (64gb) in the back USB port. I have had it recording yesterday and today for 4 hours at a time with no problems. As I have now set the rear USB port as default I can also go into the recording menu without any problem.

But.. now when the receiver goes into standby the fan is constantly running? (It also runs when the receiver is on - which is normal- but now seems quieter than it did)

At first I was wondering if the fan was just running to cool the receiver down. But it’s now been running 24 hours constantly. The receiver is warm to touch. I tried using a desk fan which cooled the receiver, but the fan is still running.

It didn’t used to run when in standby before? I have also tried switching the fan off in the menu, but it still runs.

Is the fan faulty, if so can it be replaced with a pc type fan?

[adm]

Thanks for the reply. I haven’t had chance to take the hard drive out of the receiver yet. I was thinking of getting a new hard drive and copying the old files into the new drive. It has to be ordered though and will take 2 weeks. In the meantime I have put a memory stick (64gb) in the back USB port. I have had it recording yesterday and today for 4 hours at a time with no problems. As I have now set the rear USB port as default I can also go into the recording menu without any problem.

But.. now when the receiver goes into standby the fan is constantly running? (It also runs when the receiver is on - which is normal- but now seems quieter than it did)

At first I was wondering if the fan was just running to cool the receiver down. But it’s now been running 24 hours constantly. The receiver is warm to touch. I tried using a desk fan which cooled the receiver, but the fan is still running.

It didn’t used to run when in standby before? I have also tried switching the fan off in the menu, but it still runs.

Is the fan faulty, if so can it be replaced with a pc type fan?

My guess is also that it's faulty capacitors in the power supply. Its unlikely that the tuner, hard disk and fan have all failed. The common factor is the power that is being supplied to all of them.

If the fan is spinning then it's very unlikely to be the fan itself that has failed. It's more likely that the power to the fan is failing to be removed when turned off. Either an electronic switch on the motherboard has failed or the software controlling that switch has got lost (crashed in some way). Again this could be a symptom of a failing power supply unit (PSU). When electrolytic capacitors in the power supply fail they don't tend to just go bang an the box stops working completely. What happens that they fail gradually and power supply voltages start changing to limits that don't allow the rest of the electronics to work reliably.

When you open up the cover try taking some "good" photos of the power supply board/area and post them here. Try and take some photos from different angles. Sometimes it's possible to visually spot a faulty electronic capacitor because they bulge out at the top of their cases.

[Eurobuff]

My guess is also that it's faulty capacitors in the power supply. Its unlikely that the tuner, hard disk and fan have all failed. The common factor is the power that is being supplied to all of them.

If the fan is spinning then it's very unlikely to be the fan itself that has failed. It's more likely that the power to the fan is failing to be removed when turned off. Either an electronic switch on the motherboard has failed or the software controlling that switch has got lost (crashed in some way). Again this could be a symptom of a failing power supply unit (PSU). When electrolytic capacitors in the power supply fail they don't tend to just go bang an the box stops working completely. What happens that they fail gradually and power supply voltages start changing to limits that don't allow the rest of the electronics to work reliably.

When you open up the cover try taking some "good" photos of the power supply board/area and post them here. Try and take some photos from different angles. Sometimes it's possible to visually spot a faulty electronic capacitor because they bulge out at the top of their cases.

I rang a place today that were showing spare parts for Technomate receivers. Turns out his website needs updating and doesn’t have them anymore, however he thought it was possibly software corruption. I have tried reinstalling the software (I didn’t factory reset the box first though, trying not to lose my satellite motor positions), but it made no difference. But I tried putting the box in eco mode (clock off / Rf loop through/ scart switch off when shut down etc), and when I do that, the fan does stop running when I switch the receiver off. Not sure if that means anything?

My plan was to buy a new hard drive and ask a pc repairer to put it in for me. And thought that if that fan needed replacing he could maybe do that at the same time? Im ok tinkering with software, but not with hardware, that’s scary! Im not sure what to do now.

I wish it was as simple as buying another one 😪 I’ve been tinkering with a VU Plus that someone lent me, but it seems it’s not compatible with smartwi that I use.

[Eurobuff]

My guess is also that it's faulty capacitors in the power supply. Its unlikely that the tuner, hard disk and fan have all failed. The common factor is the power that is being supplied to all of them.

If the fan is spinning then it's very unlikely to be the fan itself that has failed. It's more likely that the power to the fan is failing to be removed when turned off. Either an electronic switch on the motherboard has failed or the software controlling that switch has got lost (crashed in some way). Again this could be a symptom of a failing power supply unit (PSU). When electrolytic capacitors in the power supply fail they don't tend to just go bang an the box stops working completely. What happens that they fail gradually and power supply voltages start changing to limits that don't allow the rest of the electronics to work reliably.

When you open up the cover try taking some "good" photos of the power supply board/area and post them here. Try and take some photos from different angles. Sometimes it's possible to visually spot a faulty electronic capacitor because they bulge out at the top of their cases.

I got someone to take the old hard drive out, in the hope the files could be taken off, but sadly not it’s had it. Ordered a new hard drive. In the mean time I was using the tn7100 with memory stick. Since taking the faulty hard drive out, the fan switches off when the receiver is put in standby?? Sounds ok when the receiver is on and recording too. Seems to be working ok with the memory stick, no tuner fail issues, and haven’t been running a desk fan to cool it down. Got the new hard drive, and now with that in, it is really noisy when the receiver is powered up (not even recording), it’s noisier than it ever was. So someone has opened up the receiver and I’ve taken some photos. You won’t be able to see the fan as he had removed it at the time, ordered a new fan from Amazon. I’ve attached the photos. I don’t know if this will show anything. I can see with my untrained eye a huge amount of dust! I’m wondering if this can be the problem.

Please can you tell me what you think