Thread: Pansat 9200 w/ S2 8psk Addin Card

i run my 9200's with the tops removed. they get too hot and seem to freeze up more when they are hotter.

Originally Posted by sanjap

Wow, that is one very crude way to cool the box. My 2yr old son will pour juice on it if i leave it like that. I am tired of rebooting my pansat 9200HD. I guess i will have to put a fan inside. But how should i do it? Someone told me the fan should blow out of the box rather than into the box. How can i do that?

I tried 1 fan first did very little if any good.
2 was better i will add another soon and post pictures.
might be a week or 2.

I have been running my 9200 with the s-2 plus board and have never had a heat issue. The receiver is in an entertainment center but it is well ventilated. I have had some issues with freezing from time to time. At that time I took a computer case fan and set it beside the receiver. Doing that did not make any difference in the performance. I have had my 9200 close to two years now. I think they need some bin refinement. The only trouble I have with the box is not getting any quality sometimes when I first turn it on. A simple reboot solves that problem for me. Have a great day!

Originally Posted by stone1150

I have had some issues with freezing from time to time.

the heat makes this happen

Originally Posted by stone1150

I have been running my 9200 with the s-2 plus board and have never had a heat issue.!

first time i ever heard that.

what firmware are you running Stone ?

it's not that it feels that warm to the touch. my SV-8000 will feel warmer.
with that large fan it needed rebooting no more than any other box.
but i only use the 9200 to scan 90% of the time. but i will have it scaning for hours at a time. i use the AZ to watch tv as it is all it's good for.

Here's a picture showing how I modified my 9200 with cooling fans. The fans are from old computer cases. Remember, don't do any mods to your unit if you have concerns about a warranty. The fans are attached to the top cover with rubber bands and foam cushioning. That tends to reduce the noise. I power the fans with a 12 volt wall transformer. The noise was a little loud so I reduced the voltage with some appropriately sized resistors to around 11 volts. There's still plenty of airflow but with less noise. I made sure the fans don't touch anything in the unit so not to produce a short or wear anything down. They are pointed directly at the heatsinks on the board. I use the signal strength indicators to show how fast the unit is running. If you push the "SIG" button on the remote and the indicator bars slowly crawl up, then your unit is running slow. With the fans on, my unit's indicator bars pop up almost instantanously. It almost seems like when these units were proto-typed, Pansat tested it with military or commercial grade chips. When it came time to mass produce the units, knowingly or unknowlingly, lots of these units were replaced with consumer grade chips, which do poorly when running hot. Or maybe the designers tried to overclock the cpu for better performance and this is the results. Anyway, with all the comments on the internet concerning the overheating of these units, I'm surprised that Pansat is still selling the units without some sort of factory mods or upgrades. Good luck.

Originally Posted by stone1150
I have had some issues with freezing from time to time.

Originally Posted by madmadworld

the heat makes this happen

Originally Posted by stone1150
I have been running my 9200 with the s-2 plus board and have never had a heat issue.!


first time i ever heard that.

what firmware are you running Stone ?

it's not that it feels that warm to the touch. my SV-8000 will feel warmer.
with that large fan it needed rebooting no more than any other box.
but i only use the 9200 to scan 90% of the time. but i will have it scaning for hours at a time. i use the AZ to watch tv as it is all it's good for.

Please do not pick and choose what I say.......If you pick and choose, keep it in context please. If you are going to quote me, quote all of what I say. Do not take anything I say out of context! Thank you. Now what I said in it's entirety...

I have had some issues with freezing from time to time. At that time I took a computer case fan and set it beside the receiver. Doing that did not make any difference in the performance.

The fan dropped the temperature of the receiver however slight. However the thing still acted up at random times. Hell, I even have to reboot sometimes right after I turn the thing on! Heat certainly is not a problem when the receiver is off for crying out loud.
So I did the fan thing. It did not make any difference in the performance. At first I thought it did. As it turned out it did not. The problems persisted as far as the locking up and rebooting goes. Like I said, I am confident that a bin refinement is needed. The box is only a computer. Look at windows! No fan makes that run smooth. It is the operating system. The 9200 is the same way.
I am running the Pansat bin number 1226 and have the S-2 plus installed. Maybe that is the difference. Many people put that "other" 8psk board in there. Those hack boards do get hot from what I have read. But I don't know. Just guessing there. If you have any more doubts, I could make a video showing a thermometer on the box. Have a great day.

P.S. You mentioned the following.....

it's not that it feels that warm to the touch. my SV-8000 will feel warmer.

If the receiver is not "that warm" as you put it, How can the problem be heat? One has to have heat to have a heat related problem.

I use the signal strength indicators to show how fast the unit is running. If you push the "SIG" button on the remote and the indicator bars slowly crawl up, then your unit is running slow. With the fans on, my unit's indicator bars pop up almost instantanously.

I have never had the "slow" signal bars problem myself. Only the occasional reboot from the receiver getting "confused". Sometimes during scanning. Sometimes trying to view a channel. Sometimes going from HD to Sd. Sometimes right after I turn it on. There is no common factor that I can find. And one should know, I ran the fan for a few weeks before I came to the conclusion that heat was not the problem with the random reboots that were needed. They need a better bin writer to get the bugs out. Have a great day!

I tested several configurations before I decided I needed fans blowing directly on the heatsinks. I tried computer fans sitting on top of the cover blowing or sucking the air. I tried a laptop cooling pad under and on top of the unit blowing and sucking the air. The different setups had varying results but the 9200 would still freeze or slow down, especially during high computing tasks like blind scanning a satellite for both S and S-2 signals. I found when I removed the cover and placed the laptop cooling pad so air was blowing directly on the cpu heatsink, the unit would perform as advertised and I was really happy. I then put fans on the inside to make it look better.

If you've already tried a fan with good airflow blowing directly on the heatsinks and still have problems, then I would agree your problem lies elsewhere. But I think the bin is ok since its not a problem on all 9200s. Have you tried reloading the latest bin? If that doesn't help, the symptoms you describe lean more toward a power supply problem or memory chip problem. The same random error symptoms occur on a regular computer with either a bad part in the power supply (usually a leaking capacitor) or bad or incorrect memory module.

I'm not trying to insult your troubleshooting techniques but to just supply additional information that may help you or others. When dealing with units build with parts from the lowest bidder, things are destined to go wrong somewhere. And in this hobby, the more information - the better. Good luck to you and others.

stone
i was not trying to p you off at me just trying get information.

Originally Posted by stone1150

Do not take anything I say out of context! .

we do that all the time here just to get to the bottom of things.you do in your next post.
relax. we all are just trying to better our hobby.

making a guess, since your unit is so old maybe you got better parts in it than mine and others.

if the bin was my trouble it would have still been there with the 12in fan and open case. and the unit worked fine like that. using 1226 too.

so you never have the slow operation going thru the menu or as Hermitman stated asking unit to display the signal strength ?
everyone i know has this until a cooling mod is added.
by the way mine suck even before i added the s-2 board.

added the first fan below pic 1 & 2
this did not fix it.

this is how i have it now in pic 3
works better with the 2 but only <> 75% of how well it did with that 12in fan and open case.

Hermitman
BIG THANKS for the info and the pictures.
i will try to position fan as you have them.
will report back the results.