DTS XD-10 : Won't Power UP

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Yeah, it isn't practical to change the DTS LEDs in the field. Once you solve the jigsaw puzzle of getting the guide roller off of the LED bracket, you'll find that there is a channel of RTV holding the last bit of the red/black (could be different colors) wires and the LED itself. So, once you dig all of that out, depending on if you were lucky in not damaging the wires (including from the reader disassembly), you have to put it all back but, before you can do that, you have to let the new RTV cure. Then you can put it all back together and aim the LED at the lens/cell/test. There is but so much time in an operating theatre.

To be honest, they weren't all that much of a problem to do, unsolder wires from PCB, slide wires out of chassis, carefully slide rectangular mount off wire by feeding the wire into that mount . I spent perhaps 90 minutes doing one. then let the silicone dry over night and check alignment the next day. You can also temporarily assemble it with out silicone to test it first if desired. I made a mount for one of my Dubber racks and used that to do alignment. Did the same with the BACP DP-70 scanners. To find the LED, I sent a good one to several companies that made that size LED and one came back with a perfect match. Some where I have photos of all this...

I never needed to repair the CP65 power supplies. For the Panastereo, the fan was the biggest failure point for me. Some claimed the small bridge rectifier but I didn't have problems with those. The PS510 never seemed to have problems.

Sorry, my Typo Error... CP-650, not 65. But today, if a CP-65 were going to be placed in service, I would recap the whole thing. Ditto for any other older processor. I did have several bridges fail in Panastereo's. I mounted a new bridge on the heat sink in a small area I machined flat. If you compare an Australian to a Smart Panastereo, the bridge in the one from down under is quite a bit larger... physically. Yea, the fans!

Strong de-rated the compact 1-3KW supplies to 1-2.5KW. I wonder how close to the edge it was at 3KW. Depending on what part of the supply you are looking at or what literature you are reading, it would still say 1-3KW.

They did de-rate it, however, they would still fail from bad power surges. In places like Southern Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, etc. if lightning hit really close by, or if they didn't have full ventilation, plugged ventilation holes, or a hot booth in the summer over a couple years.. Cottonwood trees were very common in Utah and parts of Wyoming, had one in my front yard in Utah. The 3 to 4K units were a lot more reliable and had double the the switching and rectification devices and heat double the heat sinks. The 2.5 kw unit would have had better luck if it had had more heat sink area. There were only two devices each on the positive and negative sides for both switching and rectification. IR has since come out with higher current / voltage devices in the same package since those days. Also, they saw Varistor failure, and certain diodes on the pcb would usually short out if the power devices failed. Had to check components carefully or you may fry a whole new set of devices.

[Blaine Young]

I've come across 2 XD10 units with ASUS motherboards that had bulging caps. I replaced those and recovered both motherboards. I'm now trying to bypass the stupid daughter board with the power switch and put in a momentary switch wired to the motherboard standard power switch connectors. One unit works perfectly. The other, which has 2 dark green wires on the daughter board (one going to the green wire on the PS and one routed through the power switch to be black PS wire), refuses to work with the momentary switch. Any ideas here?

[Marco Giustini]

I had one myself and as silly as it might seem, reinstalling the SW from scratch fixed that. I think that feature needs some modules to be installed which (I believe) weren't installed with earlier versions and an update would not change that.

Though I think my issue was that the software would not initiate a shut down with a momentary press - turning on the system should always work as that is a standard ATX board. Check the BIOS settings for that, check under energy/ACPI.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I've come across 2 XD10 units with ASUS motherboards that had bulging caps. I replaced those and recovered both motherboards. I'm now trying to bypass the stupid daughter board with the power switch and put in a momentary switch wired to the motherboard standard power switch connectors. One unit works perfectly. The other, which has 2 dark green wires on the daughter board (one going to the green wire on the PS and one routed through the power switch to be black PS wire), refuses to work with the momentary switch. Any ideas here?

The company I worked for sold gobs of XD-10's... I recapped the first one in the shop, but it was so easy to do that I ended up doing them right on site at the theaters. If you sent an XD-10 to DTS for cap repair, it cost the dealer about a grand because they had to replace the chassis and a couple other metal parts in order to accommodate the new motherboard they switched to.

[Blaine Young]

I had one myself and as silly as it might seem, reinstalling the SW from scratch fixed that. I think that feature needs some modules to be installed which (I believe) weren't installed with earlier versions and an update would not change that.

Though I think my issue was that the software would not initiate a shut down with a momentary press - turning on the system should always work as that is a standard ATX board. Check the BIOS settings for that, check under energy/ACPI.

As part of this work, I also installed a 1TB SSD, so the actual install is brand new (on v2.2.06). I don't know if turning off is a problem, because I can't get the unit to turn on.

[Marco Giustini]

So you're saying that te affected board turns on with the daughterboard but NOT when you short the Power On pins?

[Blaine Young]

So you're saying that te affected board turns on with the daughterboard but NOT when you short the Power On pins?

Yes, exactly.

[Marco Giustini]

Bizarre.

Did you fully remove the daughterboard from the MB? The daughterboard can also control the RESET line and it's wired to the PSU Power On line so it's better to have it out of the way completely. But what the daughterboard does, it's "pulsing" "Power On" on the header. It doesn't do much more ?

I would recommend to make sure you're shorting the right pins but you have another identical board which works so...

Did you jump the chassis intrusion pins when you removed the board?

[Blaine Young]

Yes, I pulled the daughter board completely and shorted the chassis intrusion pins with a jumper.

I even swapped the motherboards between the two chassis, and with nothing plugged into the board except the power and hard drive, the behavior followed the motherboard. All the BIOS settings are the same. I just can't figure it out. I may abandon the momentary switch for this unit.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Very odd. I've only been in our XD-10 once and it doesn't have the daughter board that I recall. So perhaps not much to offer here.

But if you have another compatible PSU lying around maybe try it with a bog standard power supply? On the off chance the factory PSU is expecting something weird in combination with the daughter board?

Green on a 24pin ATX connector would normally be "power on". Perhaps that is broken out and routed directly to the daughter board instead? If there is no functioning "power on" wire on the 24pin connector that might explain this weird behavior? (But one would have expected moving it to the chassis/PSU with "normal" behavior would have produced the normal result).

[Marco Giustini]

The daughter board is wired to 5VSB, 5V, Power on and Reset. There is no special magic inside. There is a little PIC with a basic program to turn a "rocker switch" signal into "pulses".

If the daughter board works and shorting manually does not... well it doesn't make much sense ?

The daughterboard gets 5VSB from the Chassis intrusion pins - and also shorting the chassis intrusion pins so you don't get an error. If you remove that connector, you get an error when it POST but I don't think it prevents the boards from even starting. Though it might be something you want to check.

When you tested, did you remove the daughterboard from the PSU as well?

Default BIOS settings should work, that is a "custom" DTS BIOS - that is, nothing fancy about it, it just has the correct defaults.

Also check the BIOS battery, some boards won't like when the battery is dead - yes, I appreciate it would affect the daughterboard as well.

As Ryan says, you can test that MB on a bench with a standard ATX PSU - remember that the Asus needs the CPU 12V extra power as well.

Which takes me to the following question: what happens exactly when you try to power up the board? Completely dead (no fans, no beeps, no video output) or does the PSU and CPU fan start and then it sits there?

[Ryan Gallagher]

Which takes me to the following question: what happens exactly when you try to power up the board? Completely dead (no fans, no beeps, no video output) or does the PSU and CPU fan start and then it sits there?

Good distinction. If it is powering but not booting adding a buzzer or post code analyzer was helpful when I was working on my XD20. From what has been said so far hard to know if testing was done in an open or closed chassis to observe basic power up behavior.

[Marco Giustini]

What puzzles me is that it turns on with the daughterboard. So the Motherboard works. Uhm.....

[Blaine Young]

It is something specific to this particular motherboard. I moved the MB into another chassis (thereby changing the power supply) and the trouble continued. The 'trouble' is nothing starts at all. The green 'stand by' LED is on (between the two PCI slots), but shorting the 'on' pins results in nothing. No CPU fan, no beeps, nothing.

[Marco Giustini]

I wrote some pointers in my previous message. Waiting for your feedback ?