Once upon a service call...

Today we finished working on a Mitsubishi big screen that was having issues turning on but was displaying a blue screen.

Mitsubishi big screen television that was showing a blue screen.

Mr. Pickett had initially taken the video board out and replaced a few capacitors but as it turns out, that was not the end of the problem. Once the video board was re-installed, it continued doing the same thing. So we had to pull the board back out again, recheck all of the caps and also check to see if the picture tubes were leaking any fluid. Finally, it was determined that we had to replace the RF Module, a video chip and the caps. Luckily, there weren't any leaks but we did mention to the customer that if there were any further problems we would be pulling those picture tubes out refilling them with CRT Fluid (coolant), at no charge, of course.

Mr. Pickett adjusting the board.

A look at the picture tubes for leaks.

Cleaning house

As mentioned before, we do keep televisions in stock for parts. Some of them have become so banged up and gutted that we just don't have any use for them anymore.

Welcome to the Pickett TV Graveyard...

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The issue of schematics

Mitsubishi. Toshiba. Sony. Hitachi. Deawoo. Syntax. Samsung. Vizio. Panasonic. RCA. LG. Magnavox. Phillips. We could go on for days.

Then you have different types of televisions: flatscreens, big screens, digital light processing, plasma, liquid crystal display, projection, old-school tube televisions, color, black and white...

Each company breaks it down to a model number and serial number. Every television has a unique design based on the technology available, the economics driving the company along with supply and demand.Thus, establishing a need for a schematics data-base the size of a small factory.

Sometimes fixing a television comes down to simple electronics. Other times you spend hours and hours checking capacitors,diodes, resistors, fuses, etc, trouble-shooting to save your life.

Occasionally, we are lucky enough to find the schematics we need to fix a television online. Once in a while we find a diagram close enough to the original due to the time and model of the set. However, when we do have to order a schematic, it often comes with a hefty price.

On Www.PartStore.com one Panasonic manual was listed at selling for $145.65, another for $6.52. When you tell a client a price on your labor and then have to call them with the bad news that the schematics are going to cost them just about as much, it creates problems. So we have been spending time researching sites that offer free or inexpensive schematics to help solve this issue.

One site we discovered was http://www.service-manual.eu/index.php . This site features several different types of electronics and even vehicle manuals to download for free. The problem, we of course ran into, was that not all of our schematics were listed. However, they do reference other schematic websites and the odds of finding a schematic similar to your model are somewhat good due to the amount of them available on this site.

Even if we never solve the issue of the schematics, we would like our clients to know the process of trouble-shooting that we go through and that their best interest is in mind. We welcome any suggestions as to where we can find legit manuals.