This is my first post on this forum, so don't be cruel, please
The matter is:
I bought non-working RDR-HX717 for few bucks, just to have some spare parts for my RDR-HX710. Unfortunately after getting the cover off I realized that it's quite different machine (philips inside?) and I couldn't use it as spare parts.
Anyway, after I have repaired my RDR-HX710 another way, I just checked what's going on with HX717. The symptoms are: "STARTING" for several seconds. Then TV receives some kind of signal and display blank (black) screen. It do something like reset and everything repeates infinitely. It doesn't react on any key on main unit nor remote.
After reading some infos on this forum I tried to enter service mode and the observations are:
- when plugin power cord holding PLAY on main unit I see on display some (I suppose) diagnostic messages (no picture on TV). Until yesterday it finished with "FAIL 210002". Then I played a little bit with HDD jumper settings and finally got "PASS" after entering the diagnostic. I realized that someone had already played with HDD replacing it or at least changing jumper positions.
- when plugin power cord holding EJECT and REC on main unit it displays some messages related (I suspect) to firmware upgrade, something like 'DOWNLOAD", "FORCED DL", then ejects and asks for disc (I have no disc with firmware) and finally "ERROR DOWNL".
Anyway I think the problem is with HDD recognition. If somebody has changed the disk, recorder probably sees incompatibilities between disk ids (stored somewhere in non-volatile memory and new one from disk).
So questions to you are: - is there any option to enter service menu and update disk id there? What is the procedure? - I would appreciate if anybody is able to send service manual of this model to me. - The same with firmware - as the last chance I would try to update the firmware (maybe it is crashed for some reason). If somebody has it...
I follow philips way. It seems that inside HX717 is exacly DVDR725H, maybe it is important for somebody.And service manual for HDRW720 is also available and really applicable(look google).
Now I am about to connect to this machine to perform some diagnostic commands (it uses RS232 for service communication).Then I will be sure if this is disk problem only.
Anyway has anybody heard about something like 'Support CD' for RDR series?Unfortunately disk format is nothing that may be recognized byany operating system (including linux) and I will have to format itsomehow. I know that exists something like 'Master DVD' for Philips that may be used for formatting,but I cannot find it anywhere on the web. Maybe somebody has something like that? Maybe something special for Sony version?
/jayu
[ This message was edited by: jayu on 2008-04-15 18:19 ]
Unfortunately it's not exacly like that. There is a command that may be used to transfer some data from DVD to HDD. Unfortunately, as I have learned from google is: - one have to have "Master DVD" that contains the "format" data to be transferred to HDD (I'm not quite sure, but it may be even part of firmware/application code) - one have to know what parameters to give to that command (where from to get it from DVD and where to place it on HDD).
I know some people replaced the disk duplicating it from another machine (dd under linux). Unfortunately I have no access to any HX717 and can't do it.
Anyway I have to connect to HX717 with my PC (unlike other Sony products having Service Menu displayed on TV I have to do some adaptors to connect to it using RS232 - as Philips does). I don't know if I am able to repair it, but playing with it is quite enjoying
We will see. It would be even better for me to have such format command. Unfortunately - as I said - it seems that this model is Philips inside (I don't mean that only Philips drive or something, but most of boards are exacly the same as in Philips HDRW720 or DVDR725H).
Hi , I 'm french and i have a rdr-hx-717 i bought on ebay which have the same trouble than yours. I tested firmware from philips hrw720 but ...Error At last, i found this page in dutch language (but i don't understand dutch) : http://www.attic-company.nl/dvdr725h.htm
I haven't found any translation in english/french of this web page.
According to the author, It would be an alimentation trouble...
Thank you very much for replies. I'm going to check if this is a problem of power-supply simply by supplying the disk and DVD drive from external power-supply (I have one from my old computer). I will let you know about the results. Anyway - did you try to do it yourself?
In the meantime (yesterday) I did simple interface cable to this machine based on MAX232. Unfortunately it doesn't work as expected yet. What I can see is when I star-up the machine with the cable it doesn't display "STARTING" anymore, but sends something on this interface. As for today it is only crap (however I configured it as for HDRW720 and also tried a lot of different speeds), but I am going to check if Rx/Tx lines are not inverted and do some more investigations.
Of course if I find something I will let you know here
1. Power supply at the first sight doesn't show me any problem with voltage levels. It seems quite stable, however I haven't had good equipment to measure it.
2. Connecting DVD drive and HD to external power supply doesn't help.
3. I managed my "service" cable to work with the machine! It seems that no level conversions are required at all. So, I just connected my laptop RS232 directly to pins on machine board (I had to construct the cable anyway, because "mouse cables" or similar don't fit). That was really good experience. My observations are: - there is Philips definitely inside HX717. It works with nucleus codes and especially answer for one of them is: DS:> 903 090300: BE version = 43.02.19. PHILIPS ,VAD8043 ,43021900,5VC0537341288 0200, Optical unit version = 25.28.79.84.00 Test OK @ - I have found that this machine is not exacly as HDRW720, because some of nucleus codes doesn't work (however most of them work), and by blind typing I found some that are not documented for HDRW720 though. - I have found next points to consider when repairing the machine - two tests failed: Busy executing NUC115 5-27 Not all DMAs worked. FAIL 011502 and DS:> 2108 210802: Performance failure Minimum access time = 204 msec Maximum access time = 204 msec Average access time = 204 msec Number of commands below 160 msec = 0 Number of commands between 160 and 200 msec = 0 Number of commands between 200 and 250 msec = 1000 Number of commands above 250 = 0 Error @
The latter one is definitely Hard Disk failure. I am not sure about first one, but DMA may also be HDD dependant.
So, next step is to replace HDD, but first I have to found similar machine with working HDD or confirm what exactly Philips machine it is and have "Master DVD" for it.
What is interesting when playing with nucleus codes is for example - you may change region code of this machine I don't know if it is possible to make it region free, but at least one may change it when necessary.
I have bad sectors on old WD disk somewhere at around sector 79400. So partition table should remain not affected. Unfortunately after connecting it to Linux it doesn't show any partition, what means that there is prioprietary disk organization.
The drive I put into was just for checking if previous errors may be cleared. It was just Seagate 120GB, with some partition table, I don't know even what kind. Anyway the tests I previously performed could be completed with this new hard drive, however it doesn't contain proper data for this recorder. That's for I need this "Master DVD".
Hi, I've explore my hdd (wd1600bb) with "winhex". I haven't found trace of any known partition like fat32,ntfs... I found the word "Philips" , titles of television programs and "Boot-HTM" I've made a research on internet with"boot-htm". All my internet researchs leads to xbox...But its filesystem is called FATX and i haven't found this word on the hdd.
One idea should be : make an image of the hdd (by paragon drive backup ; option " process sector by sector") and restore this image on another 160 gb drive...
Searching...
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Posted: 2008-04-06 04:26
