saved a viewsat 9000d stuck on 'boot'

[nerdyboarder]

Hi! Long time reader first time poster

I recently won a veiwsat 9000d off eBay, and I didn't exactly read this before hand but it was untested by the seller. It was new, I figured I could take my chances it would be fine.

When I booted it up the first time I only had the power cord and a composite video attached. Flipped the power switch and nothing but 'boot' was displayed on the veiwsat's screen, and nothing was detected over composite or HDMI. After searching around various forums I found out this was a known problem and there had been various fixes for it. A lot of the info was from when the box was first released, and it suggested using a serial cable to load a 'fix' then upload a new firmware... all over serial. My main machine doesn't have serial readily available, and newer documentation suggested that you could load firmware updates via a usb flash drive. I might note that the documentation for this receiver seems quite scattered and a lot of seems to involve some not-so-nice engineering.

I had to use one of those not so nice sites to find the latest firmware... I only care about fta so I chose the latest factory firmware. I loaded it on my usb drive, with a path of /USB/PFTAHDSW.pgm Make sure that whatever firmware you choose is named 'PFTAHDSW.pgm' and make sure usb is capitalized. I plugged the usb drive into the front usb port of the box and it said "BOOT", then "CHECK USB", and finally "DOWNLOAD". The screen changed to "ERASING" and I pulled out the usb drive and it did its thing. After it rebooted I went into the menu settings and did a factory reset.

What do ya know, its working just fine, and surprise! It came with a 8qpsk board. That wasn't in the item description!

Anyway, hopes this helps anyone with one of these boxes, aparently this "boot" screen problem can happen quite easily... maybe I'll have good luck. I bought this it because I wanted ATSC and FTA receivers in one box. I'm mostly interested in the English stuff off galaxy 19 and history channel on ses 1.

I have a Geosatpro 90cm that I need to get a non-penetrating roof mount for (renting the place I'm at, don't want to make any holes), and maybe a motor. I plan on mounting a small outdoor tv antenna onto a pipe on the top of the dish. It seems like I can't get a roof mount for less then $85 shipped, anyone know of a better price?

For the ATSC and mount, I was going to go with the winegard DS-1111 mount to a GS-2200 antenna. It go good reviews on newegg, and I'm roughly 40 miles away from the towers with no major obstructions. It's a two story place so it'll be a good height above ground level. Fortunately all of the stations in the area broadcast from roughly the same point so I don't need a rotator.

 

[Mr Tony]

very cool that you got it working again. I had to do something similar with a sonicview 360 premium that I bricked and had to do stuff like that
http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/243954-did-i-just-brick-sonicview-360-a.html

 

[turbosat]

"Untested by the seller" my &SS. That's the biggest reason I stay away from ebay. They knew it was probably shot when they sold it, I'm glad you were able to fix it, hope you get some good use out of it. I noticed that was your first post too-so welcome to the place!!!

 

[WTguy]

You are right about the "untested", but if you know how to work around with these puppies then it can be very rewarding if you get one for dirt cheap. That is how I got my Max HD, guy thought he had "bricked" it (to use Ice's term) when it was practically brand new, I got it for next to nothing by playing dumb/ignorant. Most of those guys were only there to get illegal "free" tv, a lot of them know next to nothing about what they have and what can be done with them.

 

[Mr Tony]

I always like the auctions that say "has the newest factory software in it" and it does....but then has all the Dish/Bell stations or if you get one with a PVR built in it has a bunch of PPV movies on it or something of the nature

 

[freezy]

there were (factory sponsored cough cough) 3rd party firmwares that would contain killer apps to "brick" many different clones of brands of receivers (why would a 3rd party care if there were clones?). The only option was to J-Tag (rewrite) the receivers brain directly using a special cable from a computer. Sometimes you needed to solder a 12pin connector onto the motherboard.

 

[nerdyboarder]

Thanks guys! This isn't the first time I've gotten something broken and brought it back to life. My first series 1 tivo I got at a swap meet for $30 saying it "worked" but it ended up having a fryed modem (pretty common problem with those orginal tivos), had to make a headphone plug to serial adapter since I didn't have the original tivo serial cable to use an external modem.

As far as my roof mount goes, I was going to go with this. Seems to be the cheepest: Non-Penetrating Roof Mount SATELLITE NEW IN THE BOX - eBay (item 150562259258 end time Mar-14-11 07:10:42 PDT)

Any good recommendations for an inexpensive motor? This part is optional, I can live with just 101 and 97 for now if need be but if I'm going to be up on the roof setting stuff up I might as well... haha.

 

[freezy]

I have a sg2100. It was really cheap ($50). It has a tendency to drift. There are better ones around