CubeRevo HD PSU repair

Good idea – much simpler, and good news I think. So on the male terminal on the box, Pin 2 gives no voltage and Pin 3 gives -8.6v. This comes on after the flashing LED stops – about two minutes after power on. It’s also the same measured to Pin 5 – GND. With the cable still plugged in to the PC, the female end of the connector cable gives GND to Pin 2 as -11.1v and nothing to Pin3. So it looks like my cable does do the crossover, assuming the pinout at the PC is standard. Is the disparity in voltage a worry?

Yes I think you are right if I understand what you are saying:-

PCBox PC male pin 2 0V
PCBox PC male pin 3 -8,6V

PC male pin ? cable female pin ? <---------------> cable female pin 2 -11.1V
PC male pin ? cable female pin ? <---------------> cable female pin 3 0V

So if you plug the cable into the box the negative outputs will connect to the 0V inputs - that's what we want!
Voltages are not too critical.

We need to check the port settings on the PC.
First check in device settings - do you have more than one serial port and if so are you selecting the correct one in PUTTY.
Sometimes you have a 25 pin port and a 9 pin port.

I need to try PUTTY and check if there are settings which could be causing us pain.
OK so I only seem to be able to see COM1 this may be a problem if you are trying to use another port. Set speed to 115200 and flow control to none and click open button at the bottom. Just noticed - on the left click session and make sure serial is selected and not SSH or any of the others.

If you cannot select the right port try another program - I tried TERA TERM the other day and it worked on COM4 when I used it on an old box that I was using to test it.

The fact that you get -8.6V from the box is an encouraging sign - I really think this should work!

Just tried PUTTY again you can select another port you just need to manually change it eg. change 1 to 2 to change from Com1 to Com2.
When you click open a text window opens to show the communication taking place.

By the way to get at flow control click serial at bottom left.

Yes I only have COM port and I set it to 115,200, 8bits, no parity and no flow control. Same on PuTTY and PCEditor which incorporates flash tools Trying to use FlashTools/PCEditor to flash an update image produces the message
Failed to open com port: \\.\COM1, Error No. – 51
However, no mount of Ctr+Z, standby button/right or up arrows produces any response. One thing I did check was that we had a voltage at Pin3 of the box after the standby switch LED went off. We didn’t lose it by pressing the standby button.

I have managed to duplicate your error 51 with nothing connected to my port.
It means the port is open in another application.
So forget what I said you cannot use PUTTY and Flashtools at the same time.

I have run Flashtools using Com4 in my case, set it up to flash and have the messages:-
N:COM Port Monitoring Started[20:55:15]
N:Ready(9000HD_usb_iboot_1.3.3_24 1008.img[20:55:15]

Perhaps you can do similar and push, prod, restart the box etc to try and kick it off.

Thanks in FlashTools I get it say Ready, but I can’t find a way for it to spring into action – not holding standby button and right button or up button, and powering down and then back up. Shutting that and using PuTTY I get the blank box and the green curso top left, but not beyond that.

This is very disappointing I don't have any suggestions at the moment apart from maybe shorting pin 15 and 16 on the JTAG connector to reset the box but I would think that this will be the same as power off/on. Need some time to think about this and consider what options we have left.

You could monitor the RS232 output pin from the box does it change at all? If it changes but we don't see any data we may have a serial port problem on the PC. Can we be sure the port works, have you used it for anything else?

You could disconnect the box and loop back to the PC by linking pin 2/3 on the box end of the cable then what you type on the PC keyboard should echo in the PUTTY box. I think that should work and will prove transmit/receive from PC RS232 port. Yes I tried it and it works.

You could try a lower speed setting say 9600.
I would like you to try Tera Term instead of PUTTY - will send you it by email - I think it's a simpler program with fewer settings to worry about.

I will be busy tomorrow but will check for posts when I can.

I had a thought - we have been careful to disable handshaking on the PC end but what about the box end?
The few boxes I have used with serial did not use handshaking and only used 3 wires, TX, RX and GND.
This may be clutching at straws but could be worth a try.

What you need to do is link pin7 and 8 and pin1, 4 and 6 on the box end, you can remove any existing wires.
Once again I cannot upload a file, I will email it to you.

Don't forget to try typing ctrl+z

Just an observation but I tried serial on my old Travelmate 6900HD the other day and could not get it work.
I remembered using a program before to backup settings called Clarke Tech Studio so I tried that and was able to backup settings.
So even though there was no apparent communication there seems to be some magic way to enable it at least in that case.
Perhaps there is a version of this program for IPBox you could try?

Thanks will try that later - probably tomorrow now.

I don’t think I’ve ever used the serial port on this computer for anything.
So I’ve linked Pins 2 and 3 at the female end of the cable from the PC. I open PuTTY in Serial and then type a few characters on the desktop or in MS Word, and nothing appears in the box. Same at 9600b/s and same in Teraterm.
Is that what you wanted me to try? I tried typing something in the box. Something appeared in PuTTY, but not Qwerty. In Teraterm it reproduced querty – or rather it did. Now I can’t type anything in the PuTTY box, nor in Teraterm.
I don’t think I can disable handshaking at the box end with the cable connected. Inside the box there is an 8-pin connector to the motherboard but it seems to be hard wired at both ends.

I think you are doing it right but just to recap.
Cable plugged into PC and link pins 2/3 on the other end.
For this test speed does not matter as transmit and receive should be the same speed.
If the port can't do this there is no way it will talk to the box.

Perhaps you could remove the cable and try linking pins 2/3 directly on PC port, I know it's male and probably around the back but I'm sure you can work something out.
Also check cable continuity - pin 2 and 3 one end to 3 and 2 the other, it is possible it may not be a serial cable. Of course you also need pin 5 to 5 (but not for this test).

Do you have an old serial card you can plug in and use instead or old laptop with serial port?
When I ran this test I used this laptop with a USB to serial cable and just shorted pins 2/3 and it worked on first attempt.

There is a setting in PUTTY/TERATERM for local echo, when turned on it will print in the box what it sends and what it receives, you should then see double/repeated characters eg aabbccddeeff

NB pins are numbered in opposite way on female plug:-

Female
5-4-3-2-1
-9-8-7-6

Male
1-2-3-4-5
-6-7-8-9

I've unplugged the cable and Pin 3 at one end connects to Pin2 on the other and vice versa. And there is continuity between Pins 5.

The cable should be OK then. Either the port is faulty or you have a hardware conflict in the PC it may show up in device manager, double click the port and then advanced. You can change the com port number, for some reason mine says 3 and 5 are in use and is currently set to 4. When I tried changing this the other day it did not seem to work, but knowing Microsoft it might have done after a reboot.

You could try rebooting and using BIOS/Setup - disable any ports you don't need like parallel/printer (you could also disable USB temporarily) - you may have the option to change port number, address and interrupt settings try changing these and hope for the best. Other than that it looks like you need another port. The USB serial cable I suggested (for use with Dreambox) to you was only about £3.50 but of course that will take a few days to arrive. I suspect computer shops would cost more but I have not checked.

Thanks. I have no LPT/Parallel port, no other COM ports, and Device Manager says this one is hunky dory and we know it does deliver credible voltages. So will try the Serial to USB cable.

The USB-Serial cable came very quickly. No difference though. Repeated CTRL+Z orocuces no response in either PuTTY or Teraterm.

I forgot to mention that I came across someone saying CTRL+C rather than CTRL+Z so that may be worth a try.
Please try the link back test by linking pin2+3 to be sure to be sure.
I would like some details from some devices on the motherboard, there are 4 Hynix memory chips, 2 below the CPU/Processor and 2 to the left of it. Further to the left there are 2 5-pin devices with the middle leg cut short with an ST logo on them, I want to know the details from these and also from the smaller device (3 pins?) in between these. I think these are voltage regulators or power controllers/switches or something like that I want the device types to look up data on these. Some pics of this area could also be useful and if you can manage some voltage measurements as well that would great as well - be careful not to short pins with your probes when taking readings.

There is a large resistor close to these devices please check this, I think it should be 0.5ohm. Large device close to CPU right side is a flash device please read details so I can look up data. I think we need to look for signs that the CPU is alive and doing something and that attached devices have the supplies they need to function properly.

Thanks, will got on with that later.
I've tried linking Pins 2 and 3 on the new serial female connector and typing something on the computer. There is no response either from PuTTY or Teraterm. I'm getting to wonder if there is something about my computer and these terminal programmes. Sometimes I can type in the dialogue box, sometimes not. Sometimes if I type say qwerty, I get qwerty, sometimes a string o ofther characters including backspace/delete. In Teraterm I've found where to enable echo, but haven't found anything in PuTTy. I'm running Windows Defender but nothing else I can think of.

That is really weird, how secure is your link? I would use a piece of stiff solid wire - the fact it works sometimes may suggest an intermittent connection. Do you have another PC or laptop you can try this on? I cannot find local echo in PUTTY either perhaps they left the feature out to keep the program size to a minimum. I really don't understand why it should behave like this but like I said before if it can't talk to itself it will have no chance with the box. In a way I am hoping that there is a problem with one of the voltage regulator type devices, a supply missing from the RAM's or flash chip would hopefully be an easier fault to trace. Check for hot or warm devices on the motherboard. Also if the CPU heatsink is stone cold it is probably inactive but "why?" would be the difficult question.

No, the loopback has not worked intermittently. I'm using solid phone wire, which may be a little thin, but I'm careful to jiggle it about, press it aginst the sides of the socket etc. and it did give us the expected voltage readings.
I'll get back later on the other things.

So having said that, I thought I'd better check the voltages on the new female serial cable and there are none. The old one is still connected i.e. female 9-pin to female 9-pin and that is as before. The new one shows up as SERIAL-USB CH340(COM5), and Windows says drivers up to date.