houston tracker

[andyvan]

I have two houston tracker receivers(tracker viii plus and a tracker x)that have been sitting with just the AC plugged in.I recently tried to turn them on and got nothing,no power nothing.I do have AC inside.Is there a Cmos battery that can be replaced or is there anything else to look for or do.Any help that can be give me will be greatly appreciated.thanks
PS is there someplace I can get a schematic.

 

[boba]

Echostar owned Houston Tracker before DISH Network became popular. Tracker 8 & 10 had problems with their switching power supplies so that is probably your problem but I don't believe Echostar offers any support for those products. This would be better in the FTA forum where "C" band information is still exchanged.

 

[whatchel1]

boba is correct: wrong forum

BTW I used to be a c-band dealer and rebuilt so many of those power supplies that all I had to do was go out and buy all the caps that were in there and replace them all. As old as there are now you may be out of luck since it is likely that the circuit board may also be bad as well due to the constant over heating of it.

 

[truckracer]

remembering the days....when electronics got repaired instead of thrown in the trash.

 

[truckracer]

I would have loved to have been an adult in the early to mid 80's! Big dishes were king and so was beautiful women with big hair!

 

[andyvan]

thanks for the reply's guys,I also have a tracker viii that I have hooked up to my system but don't use much except to go to a different sat and fine tune the polarity for my fta's.It has a rolling band in the picture and assume it is an AC leak in the power supply thats why I was trying to revive the others.Does anyone know if there is a replacement power supply that I could use?thanks

 

[tempVAdish]

thanks for the reply's guys,I also have a tracker viii that I have hooked up to my system but don't use much except to go to a different sat and fine tune the polarity for my fta's.It has a rolling band in the picture and assume it is an AC leak in the power supply thats why I was trying to revive the others.Does anyone know if there is a replacement power supply that I could use?thanks

Back in the day I installed alot of V, VII+, & X's. I have seen a bad underground cable cause the hum bar you're talking of too... I used to carry the HTS power supplies on the service truck & if the PS, or LNB didn't get rid of the bar... time to strech out a new cable, or use the other coax if it didn't have KU on it...

I still have an VII+ and a X @ my old house still sitting in the floor... I miss the trackers

 

[PopcornNMore]

My Houston Tracker receivers have done the same thing. I haven't had time to look into repairing them yet.

 

[DefCon4]

I have power supplies from both the HTS8+ and 10+ open on the bench and plan to work on them when I have time, although there isn't much incentive to do so. Both designs are based on the Unitrode UC3842B Switching Voltage Regulator, so the circuitry closely follows the Application Note for the IC. Both exhibit blown electrolytic capacitors with resultant residue on the PCBs. Since electrolyte is conductive, repairs may not be as simple as replacing some caps.

I have attached some reverse-engineered schematics by M. Devries. The HTS8+ power supply is closest to the ES3100 model. The HTS10+ version has additional LM358 Op Amp circuitry that is also found on the ES3000.

If you need to source some components, I would suggest Mouser Electronics as they have no minimum or handling charges.

 

[andyvan]

thanks for the replys and the info,I haven't uised this aystem for anything but to go from sat to sat and adjust the polarity,I've got it hooked up to a couple Pansat FTA's,but most of the backhauls are in analog i thought i would try to revive it.Would a Legacy ll work on this setup in both C/KU?anybody know?I'm still using my old corotor ll with the old LNB's.
to the person who wished they had satellite back in the eighties,it was great,no scrambling and everything was free.