OTHER TBS6983 - one tuner seems to have died - what to do?

[N6BY]

I have a TBS6983 which has worked well for many years.

Recently one of the tuners has stopped working. It was intermittent for a while, but now it hasn't worked after multiple attempts.

Could it be a bad connection? Anyone have a similar experience? Advice on how to fix it?

Thanks.

 

[ancient]

I have a TBS6983 which has worked well for many years.

Recently one of the tuners has stopped working. It was intermittent for a while, but now it hasn't worked after multiple attempts.

Could it be a bad connection? Anyone have a similar experience? Advice on how to fix it?

Thanks.

I guess my first question would be, did you try swapping the coax cables between the "bad" tuner and the "good" one, just to eliminate the possibility that the problem might be the coax or the LNB (or any switches in between)?

I would suspect a failed LNB or cable (or a bad connector at the one of the cable ends) first. But if it turns out to really be the tuner, about the only thing I can suggest is pull the board and visually investigate for either signs of lightning damage (burned traces, etc.) or bulging capacitors. It seems like in the past ten years nearly every electronic device that has failed on me could be traced to a bad capacitor (usaually visually identifiable by the bulging top, though some are more obvious than others) but I don't remember offhand if there are any capacitors on that board or not. Also don't overlook the possibility that this could be the first symptom of a computer power supply starting to go bad.

One thing I really wish we still made in the USA is decent capacitors - sometimes it seems like Asian companies (with the possible exception of Japanese companies) have no idea how to make reliable ones. The company that really knew how to make them was Western Electric; there are capacitors in the ringing circuits of old phones fast approaching the century mark that still work fine!

 

[N6BY]

Its all surface mount and no user replaceable capacitors.

The PC had another DVB card installed in it. So I took it out and put the TBS card in its slot. Now the TBS card is working again.

Maybe the device driver got confused with another DVB card? Or maybe one of my PCI slots is going bad? Don't know, but I will leave it alone for awhile.

 

[ancient]

Maybe the device driver got confused with another DVB card? Or maybe one of my PCI slots is going bad? Don't know, but I will leave it alone for awhile.

I wonder if maybe the problem described in this blog post is what happened to you.

 

[N6BY]

The referenced article is for Linux, but I am using Windows 10. It could be the same issue with IRQs. But all is well now with the other DVB card removed and using a different slot.