Fixing a VORTEX 32G19

[ealex]

Hello

This is a quick post about fixing a tv that had the HDMI connector melted off the main board.
Got the TV as junk - so the only drive to fix it was my ego

The TV's id numbers are ( stickers on the main board / firmware, etc):
C/N: PC07035
P/N: CV028E_V5E0_01238
D/N: 20070322X00005
M/O:J03A117

After opening the TV i got this:


As you can see, the HDMI connector had a little accident. Looks like someone tried to weld the pins to  the case. Half of the main board was covered in sooth and the panel's connector is partially melted.

The first step was to clean up the board, to see the damaged area.
After a lot of scrubbing, using the hot-air station and a lot of flux i ended up with:


There where a lot of missing traces and deep burns inside the PCB. The protection on the HDMI lines was minimal, so it failled instantly when whatever hit the board happend.
After cleaning the board and checking there are no shorts on the main 5V rail I tried powering it up from my bench power supply.
I had to provide 5V and connect 5V_STBY to the 5V rail.
Surprinsingly the board reacted to the "power on" button and the status led changed color.
All on-board power supplies where working ok - proper voltages and no noise.

The video processor IC that was connected to the HDMI and panel was getting verry hot and I could not see any activity on the LVDS or attached DRAM lines -> the conclusion was that the chip was dead.
Also, there was the risk that whatever killed it also fried the panel, as it's directly attached.
The main CPU was actually starting and trying to put stuff on screen. I could see data going out of it and I2C activity to it's settings EEPROM.

After looking on ebay I found a board that seemed to be the same. I ended up buying it, knowing that the panel could be dead.

The new board was the same hardware, but it had a completley different firmware on it.
At least, it produces LVDS signals as soon as I connected it to 5V.
After connecting it to the chassis it started the backlight and the panel.
The different firmware meant that the pannel could not sync to the data stream => just random lines on the screen.

Swapping just the settings EEPROM did not work - the new CPU just froze with the original EEPROM.
I ended up swapping the old CPU as well(you can still see the flux)


After that the new board was able to properly driver the panel -> I could see the OSD and the TV reacted to the remote.

Next step - the power supply. This :

became this:


So after putting everything back together the TV works again. The only thing might need some work is the HDMI EDID eeprom - I might have to reflash it with proper data, but i'll check it once I get a hdmi cable


=> got myself a big old LCD TV (CCFL based)
Note: I really like the TS100 soldering iron. As the TV is very big I had to work on the floor -> TS100 + a repackaged 4S2P pack( with an added protection board) from an old notebook battery was a great combination. The cizel tip works great even on soldered heatsinks.