Beware this is a work in progress, partly put here to write down my own steps. When you feel I have not done the necessary testing yet, to be asking for help, just refrain from helping/answering/spewing-ideas until you feel that I have!First time poster who, after knowing of the site for years, finally figured out this wasn't about Energy Efficient Vehicles... (I did wonder why there was so much talk about electronics, but I mainly landed here through links on Priuschat, so that might explain the reason I thought it had to do with cars...)
So having said that I am not the sharpest pencel in the drawer, here's my problem:
I bought a cheap (60euro) Yamaha RX-A830 that the seller sold as being damaged by lightning. I *hoped* the amplifier stage had died and I could just continue making my active speakers and simply hook them up to the pre-outputs.
I knew, before buying, the amp started up, the display and input selection worked, but it had no sound. And I had found
the sevice manual online, so I figured I had a decent chance of succeeding.
So now that I actually have the amp (friend picked it up and stored it for a while to prevent shipmentcost), I did some quick testing. It has an internal testing menu, described in the service manual.
Main issue (without ever using a source or speakers yet) seems to be the digital board. Many of the communications tests between the processors come back with a NG (not good) instead of an OK.
(C1-1 ALL: NG, C1-2 BUS_FROM: OK, C1-3 BUS_FPGA: NG, etc.)
All HDMI-tests (where you loop the output to a random input) either failed completely (-- instead of NG or OK) or showed NG.
Preliminary conclusions:
There seems to be no visible damage, so that doesn't help me yet.
Some above mentioned communication checks come back with OK, so it is not just a simple supply-voltage question (that are more my cup-of-tea than data communication between >100pin microprocessors...)
I cannot find a price of a replacement digital PCB and I have no clue how to further investigate the digital board apart from just testing some voltages.
I still hope it might be something simple like the SMD capacitors that seem to fail on Onkyo boards*. But I have found no indication that Yamaha has similar issues and I doubt caps are the most likely fatalities in a nearby lightning strike.
Next steps:
I really have to test the analog part of the amplifier!
I have to test all supply voltages.
Questions:
Ideas on what is most likely to die and if it is deemed a lost cause, I may not want to hear it, but please
do tell me...
If all else fails:
sell original remote for 20 euro's and pillage the amp for parts...
* I made a link from the "Onkyo boards" to a Youtube video, but the site chose to display the video instead of hiding the link behind the words "Onkyo boards" as I had clearly instructed it to do, so I changed it. Here's a
Google search page to said video as I do not know how to link to it without it actually showing up in my posting (which I do not want! You, the reader, should decide whether or not to click the link instead of it showing up unrequested.)
EDIT: I forgot to mention that it did not show which firmware version it was running so I did an update. This update was succesfull (all 5 different software updates), but after this, it still did not show which version it was running within the self-diagnostic menu.
S4-1 SYS-VER. -----, S4-2 and S4-3 and S4-4 and S4-5 show a number, but S4-6 S-VER. --------, S4-7 S-SUM.-------- etc.
Some numbers are a versionnumber, some are a checksumnumber.