Capacitor replacement success in DMR E85H! - A long and detailed story. So I come home last week to find my favorite piece of electronic gear the Panasonic DMR E85H is completely dead. it's acting as if it's not plugged in at all. I take the cover off the unit hoping it's just the fuse. No such luck the fuse is fine. So I do the google search and come across the wealth of info on afterdawn.com. A few years back I'd done the firmware upgrade but had not had a problem with the unit since. My search landed me around page 63 of the site. Within a couple minutes I found the info on the bad capacitors at 1270 and 1271 on the power board. Figured it was worth checking the capacitors in my unit. I'm no electronics expert. In fact until this repair I had never once even attempted replacing a component at the board level. I've worked in professional video post-production for about 25 years. From time to time I have done soldering of audio connectors and patch panels but am by no means an expert with an iron. With nothing to lose, I disassembled the unit. The cover comes off with 3 screws on the back and the 2 silver ones on the sides. Once off, remove 2 screws holding down the top of the hard drive carrier and 1 screw holding the hard drive ribbon cable to the carrier. I then removed the power connector to the hard drive and flipped the drive upside down and let it sit on top of the DVD drive. I then removed the 4 screws holding the bottom of the hard drive carrier to reveal the power board. And there they were - 2 capacitors with mild bulges and a bit of brown goo on the tops. To get the power board out of the unit there are a few screws at the corners and one on the back of the unit where the AC cable enters. I also had to bend back a metal hold down tab at front outside corner of the board. I flicked a multi-wire board to board harness off with my fingernail at middle of the inside edge and the board was free. On inspection, I found my bad capacitors were at positions 1260 and 1261. I don't recall seeing 1270 and 1271. Maybe this is a different version of the board or something. I de-soldered the bad capacitors and removed them. They were the 10V 680uf as described in all the post I'd seen on the subject. So it was off to Radio Shack for replacements. They did not have an exact match so I ended up with the 35V 1000uf. These have been described as a good replacement in other posts. Same form factor but slightly larger and blue in color instead of black. The Radio Shack part number is 272-1032. They cost about $1.50/ea. I put them in fairly confident they would fit. At first I was not sure which lead was negative and which was positive. I took a look at the other capacitors on the board and saw that the negative side has a marking. After soldering the connections I trimmed the excess leads and re-installed the board. I was relieved when I re-mounted the lower drive carrier and there was no clearance problem with the new slightly taller capacitors underneath. I had a slight problem with a piece of white plastic sheeting. It had fallen off when I removed the lower drive carrier and I had a tough time figuring out where it should go. Finally discover its' proper position is to the inside rear of the carrier spanning the area from the back of the drive carrier to the back wall of the unit. I assume this helps to keep most of the fans airflow moving through this side of the unit which contains the hard drive and the power supply. I did not want to leave this part out - I can imagine there would be some overheating problems down the road if I did. I finish re-assembling the unit and plug it in. I watch with great joy as the unit looks like it's going through it's normal power-up routine. Then, the DVD tray opens and I get an on-screen message that says "invalid disk". I push the disc tray in empty and again get the "invalid disk" message. I then do all the normal power cycling and unplugging of the AC that sometimes helps things reset. No matter what I do I still get the "invalid disk" message. Figuring the unit needed a deeper resetting I did the 5 second 3 button hold down I read about in other posts. After the reset, all I got on the display was "Test *L1". I curse a lot and try everything I can think off - all kinds of power cycling and button pushing/holding but always end up back at "Test *L1". Woke up in the middle of the night very frustrated with non-working unit on my mind. I went through it step by step in my head. Then it came to me! Did I reconnect the hard drive's power cable??? After work the next day I took the cover off again and there it was - no power cable to the drive. When I'd put the lower drive carrier back in the drive's power cable ended up underneath it. I just forgot to connect it. I hooked up the drive's power cable, and re-installed the unit. Powered it up and it worked like a champ!!! Observations & Conclusions: 1. The capacitor repair is easy 2. The "Test *L1" error indicates a hard drive problem (like being really stupid and not reconnecting the drive's power cable). 3. The DMR E85H is my all time favorite piece of consumer electronics gear! I was really bummed when I found it not working and ecstatic when I fixed it myself for $3 and what should have been 20 minutes of my time. In researching a replacement it appears as though DVR/DVD burner combo units are no longer sold in the US. I'm guessing their sale was banned due to copyright infringement issues.
I followed this and the pictorial posted to the internet after my E85 went completely dark and I found two bad capacitors at 1260 and 1261 as well. 1270 and 1271 were fine. Someone else on the forum told me that the bad capacitors shouldn't cause the entire unit to go dark, but I wonder if the difference is based on which capacitors go bad since you indicated that your unit went completely dead and not just into PLEASE WAIT hell as so many with the bad capacitors at 1270 and 1271 have.
Once a couple have failed like that I would be very tempted to replace all the black ones in the psu with better rated ones. I feel it's only a matter of time before the other suspect ones fail so why not replace the lot in one go? Just a FYI .. capacitors are used to smooth ripple on voltage rails or stabilise a voltage at a point.. (add a delay to the characteristic of an amplifying device is an interesting use.. old tv's used a thing called "reverse agc" where part of the received signal was used to charge up a capacitor which in turn set the gain on the tuner stages) or in audio circumstances isolate a dc voltage difference between stages while allowing the signal to pass. Obviously if one goes open circuit it may not make much difference.. an audio amp may hum.. a tv may show bars on the screen or constant rolling or other odd visuals.. but one going short will deprive a part of the device of power and depending on what the voltage rail feeds will have various symptoms... Usually they are protected by some kind of overload sensor.. but often that's just a fuse or worse a thermal link buried inside an expensive and hard to source wound component. Sometimes they short and go bang in no uncertain terms (that's rare these days with the low voltage stuff) scattering conductive goop and foil all over the insides.. and a big puff of smoke and a very nasty smell.. Connect one of your dead 10v ones across a car battery and stand back if you want a demonstration... *giggles* Nice guide tho.. and certainly possible for somebody with a reasonable amount of care and small time soldering skills.
I replaced all four capacitors 1260-61, 1270-71. The unit powered up and even recognized the hard drive, but I have no control of the unit. It recognizes neither the remote commands or the front panal buttons. I dissassembled the unit and noticed that the ribbon cable is loose where it fits into the plug for the hard drive, the cable can actually be pulled out of its plug. I pushed the cable back into the plug, replugged it to the hard drive and tried again. Now I get an on-screen error message and telling me to press "ENTER". Pressing ENTER does nothing (I still think the unit is unresponsive to the remote and front panal controls). Does anyone know if that could cause my symptoms, or is it a coincidental problem and I just screwed up the soldering somehow?
Hi, I worked on one of these the other day with the same problem of no response to buttons or remote. So, my question is, did you remove or possibly disturb the front of the unit in some way. There is one circuit board behind the right side which contains all of the buttons(except power), and also the sensor for the remote. It is behind the buttons on the front piece of the recorder. This board is connected to the rest of the unit by one plug which is down by the front of the hard drive, a little toward the center of the unit. In the one that I worked on, someone had removed the front, and this plug was not seated properly. Once I reseated this plug all of the buttons and remote sensor worked properly. Hope this helps. rblancrt
Yes, I certainly could have disturbed the front while trying to wiggle the power board loose. I'll try to readjust it.
The other day the unit was off and I was nowhere near the remote when it randomly turned on, went into Self Check mode, and then shut off again. Seemed odd, but the unit's had glitchy behavior from time to time in the past so I didn't think much of it, but the next day when I entered the room I noticed the "Please Wait" message frozen on the display. I don't know how long it was like that, could have been hours. After a soft reset and several seconds, the regular clock display appeared, and I was able to turn the unit on, and a message appeared on screen saying I would need to set up the TV Guide function in order to use the timer. Again, this has happened once or twice in the past after having to reset, so I didn't think anything of it, everything else appeared fine, and I didn't have the time to go through the guide set-up process at that moment, so I shut the unit off and went about my business. This morning when I entered the room I found that the unit had seemingly gone dead. No display, can't power it up. I have no experience with troubleshooting electronics like this, so my question is: Is this likely a capacitor problem? If so, what can someone who has no soldering experience/skills/equipment do to fix it? Would my recordings still be on the hard drive if this problem is fixed (provided that actually is the problem) or would it reformat? I'm more concerned about recovering the existing recordings than anything else. Thanks in advance.
Hi, I am new to the forum and I need some advice. I replaced 4 capacitors and got it powered back on good. It does the self check and the L1 test. Then, it says U99 and won't respond. I turn off the power and the clock flashes. Does anyone have this problem or know what else I can do? It did not have the U99 error before I replaced the capacitors. The replacement capacitors were 10v/1000 from another electronic board. The originals were 16v/680 and 10v/680. Does anyone know if this could be the problem? I have checked all the wires to and from the hard drive. Thanks the help!!
I'm also one of those who replaced the two capacitors that was causing the "Please Wait" problem. Now, the only button that works is the power button. Nothing else responds. I checked and re-checked the front panel and made sure it was seated correctly. But it still won't respond even the remote won't respond. If you have any other ideas, I'd really appreciate it. Panasonic wants me to send the unit to them along with $140. I'd like to hold off on that until I hear from someone.
Hello, I have a DMR-E85H Panasonic DVD recorder that needs a new video board. Is there any way to save from reformatting the hard drive? Please advise. Thanks. Kevin
