Another thing to consider is the current draw of any new drive. Believing I had a bad hard drive in the E85 because of missed timer recordings, I purchased a new Seagate drive. When I swapped out drives and put the Seagate in, the E85 displayed all sorts of diagnostic failure messages. The machine just didn't have enough current in the power supply to spinup the new drive. As another person wrote, you can't increase the capacity of the unit by installing a larger hard drive. The capacity is fixed at 120GB. If you do want to install a replacement drive, shop for a drive that rotates at 5400RPM, which are very scarce to find now. Somebody on another forum wrote that a Maxtor DiamondMax 16 (4R120L0) will work fine. Just be wary of installing newer drives that spin faster, the power supply in the E85 doesn't have a lot of juice.
I've just started having problems recording on DVDs (memorix)which had been fine. I suspect that the lens may need cleaning. I've never cleaned the lens and I've been using it for over 2 years. Any ideas about what common stuff to clean it with?
wow you people rock - going to radio shack tomorrow (er, today, sat.) to get the radial capacitors to fix lately eternal "please wait" on my e85h unit - the unit's capacitors are discolored brownish on top - never swung a soldering iron before - think will go to local EPO ("electronics parts outlet") shop, fondren street & west park (houston, tex.), and find someone expert at that and pay them something to do it for me - or maybe look up some kind of local houston electronics club, find a guy there - thanks again everyone here.
bingo, well a whole $eight dollars$ later and its all back working again again, hard disk contents and everything - $3 at radio shack for the two capacitors and $5 to the electronics shop guy for the 5 minute soldering - relatively new little tv repair shop near me run by a mexican fella, before I could say anything he looked at the circuit board and pointed out the exact two bad capacitors wow he's good thank goodness for him - actually I have two of these e85h machines, the other one is still running great - also have the dmre75v (vcr tape + dvd recorder) - in addition to making dvds disks I use these machines a lot with ram disks to temporarily record news programs, view later and then erase & reuse - use the e75v machine to help convert old vcr tapes to dvd - actually it all cost me more than $8 because I also bought (pdf file download) the e85 service manual for $17 but glad I did because now have it for future reference - it also pointed out how to unplug the connection between the power circuit board and the main board, not obvious to dummy like me. anyway thanks again especially to attila and peter "pguerlain".
To LCoop Newbie Can you provide a copy of the page with that particular instruction on separting the two boards? Thanks, JP (jaspaul43@tds.net)
yes but not til tomorrow - just got in from helping relatives move all day (including FURNITURE - yikes) - have to crash for rest of evening.
well sorry still haven't quite got to this yet - will as soon as possible - 59 yrs old and taking care of 83-yr-old parents and three semi-disabled relatives (the "moving" above was part of that) - today was a little crazy too but will get to it ASAP - plus I've never uploaded anything to the I-net before so guess that will be a little learning curve when I get a round tuit.
I did some searching and found a place that carries refurbished Maxtor DiamonMax 16 120GB IDE 5400 rpm drives. It's currently listed at $52.47 each and that there are 461 in stock. Here's the link if anyone's interested in stocking up: http://www.compuvest.com/Description.jsp;jsessionid=aBRwyNUdR2RbL3o2cF?iid=671668
To LCoop Newbie If you have a scanner, just attach the PDF document to an email to me. Otherwise, just copy the page and paste it to a Word document and attach that to an email to me. Thanks, JP (jaspaul43@tds.net)
ok JP just tried to email you the relevant page - for everyone else, back to the soldering, if anyone else like me is uncomfortable learning on this circuit board I can highly recommend just looking up a local little TV/electronics repair shop - those guys have lots of experience solding on circuit boards.
Has anybody had the problem with the E85H where it fails to record a scheduled program? When my machine works it does so without any problems. But every couple of months it starts acting up where it doesn't turn on to record a program that's in the list of scheduled programs. In the past I've been able to fix the problem by doing a deep reset. This erases all the Program Guide information and it takes about two days for the machine to recover. Then it will wake up to record all scheduled recordings. I noticed last week that the E85 didn't record some shows. I did a reset, hoping the machine would behave itself for a few months. No such luck. It turned on and recorded a half-hour program at 11:30am. But a half-hour program that was scheduled to record at 2:30pm it didn't wake up for. I was actually watching the machine to see what it would do, and it didn't do a thing. Interesting though, when I manually power on the E85, it immediately goes into record mode and starts recording the scheduled event, although it was already 3 minutes into the program. It's like the machine knows it's supposed to record a show, it just never gets the command to power on and start recording. There just doesn't seem to be any logic as to why it would work at 11:30am but not at 2:30pm. It's all very random. The last time the E85 acted up, it wouldn't power on to record something late at night, so there doesn't seem to be any pattern. So I'm running out of ideas now. I pulled the cover off a few months ago to look at those large capacitors under the hard disk, they looked fine. And I've never had the problem of it getting in a "Please Wait" state anyway. The hard drive is mostly empty with over 49 hours of recording time available. Does anybody else have this problem with the E85 skipping timer events? Is there a fix for this or is the machine starting to fail?
I had the "failure to record" problem a lot when I first had the machine, and now its doing it a lot again since I replaced the capacitors and all that. I'm going to try to re-update the firmware with a CD I made back in the day. I'm thinking that perhaps that was on some part of memory that cleared out by having the machine unplugged for a few weeks. There are instructions on this list somewhere for the firmware update. Once I try it and get a result, I'll post my experience.
FurryFace, I realize this is quite a long thread, but there are many posts about scheduled recordings not firing and solutions (e.g. hit STOP twice after viewing a recorded program so PLAY is no longer flashing in the display window). You can attempt to search the thread by using this site's search facility or read through the posts starting from page 1.
Not sure if I have seen this problem on this thread..... I recently switched a 2nd TV in the house to digital (with a cable box) and switched the main TV to High Def with a HD dvr/cable box. Each TV is also hooked up to a Panasonic DVD recorder. All of a sudden I am getting strange messages that pertain to copyright violations. Day 1: TV with HD dvr/cable box: recorded 2 shows with the symbol that they were "One time only recording." One show I needed to keep and also copy for another person so??? But since the other show was just to watch, I experimented with it and I was able to dub it to a RAM, and copy it more than once. The program I needed ended up not being a problem as it dubbed/copied more than once. I still don't know why the "one time only recording" symbol was there. 2nd week now: 2nd TV with just a cable box and Panasonic DVD recorder has at least 3 times now, stopped recording a show because it "detected a copyright" or some message close to that. The STRANGE thing is that twice I have been recording the same program on the other TV and it never gave me that message and recorded the entire progam I had it set to record. The stranger part of this is that I have been recording this channel for 3 years now and have never had a message like this pop up on the TV screen before. Is there something on the cable box or Panasonic DVD recorder that I need to turn off or??? Totally perplexed over this issue. Thanks.
I read through several dozen messages and found another suggestion on how to possibly solve the failed to record a scheduled program. With the unit on, I pressed and held in the power button until the timer indicator and all other lights go out except the clock. That didn't take long, maybe 10 seconds. Then I unplugged the unit for about 5 minutes. When I plugged it in and powered up, the machine went through a please wait and self-test mode. When it finally came up, the only thing different was all the promotional ads in the TV Guide were lost, they were totally wiped out. I tried updating the firmware, as somebody else wrote that it's possible to lose a firmware update. But when I insert the latest firmware CD, nothing happens, so the machine must still have the latest firmware. Now it's only a matter of seeing if the E85 will start behaving itself and record shows scheduled.
I've never had my machine refuse to power up and record a program. Regarding the system's copyright challenge, I would probably hook up a garden variety vhs recorder to the cable/hdd box and see if it can record.My guess, the cable comp broadcasting in hdd has some way of detecting your recording device?
soju, If you have the .pdf version of the manual, search for "one time only" or "copyright". I don't believe there is any way to disable the "one time only" feature through standard means. That's the whole point, right? You may also wish to refer to this link: http://hometheater.about.com/od/dvdrecorderfaqs/f/dvdrecgfaq4.htm and follow a link in that article to the HBO recording FAQ. You didn't state whether you were attempting to record an HBO program. Is it possible that not every show on a digital HBO channel is transmitted with the "one time only" protection yet? However, we all know that you have to start the DVR recording a minute or two before your program actually begins to be guaranteed of recording the beginning -- and to extend it a minute or two at the end. Is it possible that a "one time only" signal from a prior show or a later show is being detected and latched against the show you're attempting to record? Perhaps this might explain the difference between your two machines (i.e. a slight difference in clock time so one machine latches the "one time only" signal from an adjacent show and the other machine misses it). I have no idea what the characteristics of the "one time only" signal are - and you would not expect this with a digital signal - but could it simply be an occasional digital broadcast "one time only" false alarm? I note from the FAQ subtending from the link above that there are some broadcast services that are permitted to prohibit recording - period (i.e. HBO-On-Demand or Cinemax-On-Demand) because those services already offer "time-shift" viewing to subscribers. My suggestions may not satisfy all of your observations, so feel free to disregard ;-)
Well the soft reset (where the power button is held in until the machine goes completely off, then you unplug) didn't work. I had 2 programs scheduled to record today, one at 11:30am and another at 2:30pm. The 11:30am recorded fine. For some unknown reason the machine simply will not come out of standby to record the 2:30pm program. I noticed the machine wasn't recording at 2:40pm. When I powered on the machine it immediately went into record mode. As I wrote earlier, it knows it has a program scheduled to record, it just never gets the signal to come out of standby. I've searched and read this entire thread and some other messages as well, there just doesn't seem to be an obvious solution. Right now I just zapped the machine again. I did the channel up/channel down reset as well as the power button reset. Unplugged the machine and waited several minutes. Plugged it back in and went through the TV Guide setup. It's already picked up the time which is correct. Now it's just a matter of waiting a day or two and seeing if this dual reset will somehow be the fix.
FurryFace, I understand that you tried the firmware update, and I'm sorry that didn't work. What you describe is exactly what was happening to me that the firmware fixed ~2 years ago. Its also exactly what is happening to me again. Maybe after LOST tonight I'll try to update mine again. This machine is so frustrating! My DVR from TimeWarner is flaky, too, though. I'm thinking about digging out my VCR and trying to find some tapes to use as a backup to these "modern" devices!
This is what seems odd, I've done the "Factory Reset" by holding down the "Skip Rev" ( |<< ) "Time Slip" and "Open/Close" for 5 seconds. What happens is the machine displays the Test * L1 message. I power off and unplug. Plug back in, power in, all the settings are now at factory default. But I've never lost a firmware upgrade. The main firmware version remains at 970DL, which was the last released version. I've tried to flash up the firmware anyway using the DL-103 firmware image and the machine will not do anything once the CD is inserted. It just reads the disk for a little bit and then nothing, not even a message. This leads me to believe that it's either not possible to lose a firmware update through a factory reset, or there's a different method to do a deep factory reset that's never been described.
