On 22 Jan 2005 17:36:28 GMT, (LASERandDVDfan)
wrote:

I did check for that .. and was pretty careful when moving stuff
about. I took the main board out and removed it from it's plastic fame
to give me good access all around

But you still have to factor soldering. If you aren't that great, you will
make mistakes, including some that are only obvious with scrutiny using a
magnifying glass.

Indeed .. no one is generally 100% but when I was in the training
school at BT my 100 termal solder test job was the only one to ever
get 100% and was placed in the display cabinet? I solder as
instinctively as some folk breath and can see / 'feel' when it hasn't
gone well. My daughter was demonstrating similar skills when she was
10. She soldered a Maplin Xmas tree project that contained over 120
LED's and many other compnents and apart from working fist time the
soldering was something many TV engineers (that I have known anyway)
would be proud of ;-)

Plus, you only soldered big joints.

I did ..

The problem could have been caused by
smaller joints that you may have not paid any attention to.

Oh indeed .. but the quality of this assembly was generally very good.
I have seem some dire flow amd hand soldering in my time and this was
in comparison very good. When I was 10 my Mum would bring things home
from the Primary school she helped at, things like transistor radios,
tape players etc. They were given to her to give to me to 'play with '
"We know your Tim likes to take things to pieces etc". More often or
not I would find a broken wire or dry / poor joint (or shorted can on
old transistors) then fix and return them. ;-)

Moving parts
around probably exacerbated the cold joint condition of the existing fault and
might have also created new ones and caused a larger headache.

Indeed ..

Cold joints can
sometimes be as clear as daylight, but they can also appear just fine to the
naked eye.

I completely agree. But from the responses I got from those who know
about such things pointed me toward dry joints on the bigger
components.

Before I started resoldering I did have a gentle tap about with an
insulated screwdriver (shaft and handle) but couldn't pin any
particular area down. I would have preferred a schematic and some test
points but realised this wasn't my area of expertise so did what I
could with the tools / skills I had? Plus there are some nasty
voltages in there and I don't need a 28" TV *that much* ;-)

Had I not managed to divert the thing it would have been in the skip
anyway ..?

All the best and thanks for your time ..

T i m