Re: pioneer 1014 craped out
My brother's 1014TX just died a week ago, and as far as I know there weren't any power surges or brownouts, nothing even gave a hint of an interruption or glitch of any kind.
It was turned off, and the next morning it just would not turn on, nothing, not even a standby light, or the blinking MCACC. It's like the darn thing "died in it's sleep". Of course the warranty is expired, as he probably got some of the first 1014tx's to come out, paid like nearly a grand for the thing, now it's a big dead black brick. In the 2 years he's had the thing he/we never had the volume too high for too long, and certainly not during it's "last night" where it was idle (not even warm), turned off overnight and next morning was like a 7.1 channel boat anchor! Thought I'd try that MCACC reset code, and nothin happened.
We are wondering should we take it to a service center for a $40-$50 estimate, just to find out what they think is wrong with it, or just buy another unit (pioneer again, just like this one, but the current equivalent model, slightly better with HDMI inputs for $599).
Since the warranty was up anyway, I looked inside it (unplugged of course) and probed with my DMM for blown fuses, every one that I could find seems to be intact!
Then (with it plugged in) I tried to get it to turn on by using the DMM on "diode test" to trigger a tiny surface mount transistor and the relay, on the first board the AC line voltage is on (the board that has the 10 amp fuse on it)
All that happened was that it turned on the power to the switched outlet on the back of the unit, and put power to the primary winding of that enormous transformer. Beyond that, nothing, no fuses went, not even a blink from the front panel. It seemed to draw power for a very brief moment (all it was doing though was charging the large electrolytic capacitors when I triggered the relay)
There is low voltage DC present at least so it's not *completely* dead (otherwise biasing that transistor would not have turned on the relay for the switched outlet/ main transformer primary), but it seems that the "control logic" is missing in action. Primary supply is intact, but there's nothing else happening. Without a service manual for this beast I dare not mess with it anymore than I already have.
Whatever happened seems to have made the "control logic" become disabled (even before I looked inside this thing) Now has anybody else has the cpu in this model just up and die, or is there a hidden shutdown mechanism that "kills" the front panel on purpose to prevent any attempts to power up?)
I wouldnt have even gone in there in the first place, if it weren't for the already expired warranty. If we do end up taking it to a repair shop I'd probably leave out the part about manually tripping that relay.
