Last night about 20mins into watching Austin Powers, there was a pop followed by that bad electronic smell that I usually associate with a capacitor giving it up. The picture stopped being watchable, and the best description I can give is that it looked as if vertical hold had gone somewhat random – as it wasn’t a “rolling” picture, but one that had an unpredictable vertical position from frame to frame.
Listening to the projector, the ‘hum’ sound I attribute to the HOT board was gone as well. So there was certainly something wrong. Even after turning it off for an hour or so and returning to it, it seemed clear that there was something seriously wrong with the projector.
So tonight I figured I’d take a look and find the blown capacitor or whatever, get in touch with Curt and have him send a replacement board. I was pretty confident that the HVPS and the LVPS were both working – so I figured it was worth trying to fix. After poking around inside for half an hour, I hadn’t found anything suspicious looking – and that burnt smell was a lot fainter than it was last night. I powered up and took a look at the help screen to see if it was input related, or if the whole system was toasted. Help worked fine, exiting to normal picture mode showed me that it was fine too?!
I know that something happened, but today I can’t find any evidence of it. My current guess is that the projector needs to heat up (over heat?) in order for something to happen. I guess I’ll find out next time I watch a movie.