SkyCard 2 - signal dropout ?

Anchises

Strange problem - I've got a skycard 2 with an oval dish (80mm x 60mm maybe) - Sat 28.2 Sky ....

The picture freezes from time to time .....
I'm checking it with FAST SAtFinder - www.fastsatfinder.com

The signal Q is 72%, L is 72% - varies 69 to 73 .:)
When I listen to the voice speaking, it drops to ZERO after speaking the signal level EXACTLY 20 times. shows the puffs of smoke once and then restarts to speak the signal again at 72 %.

Sound like a timing error rather then a hardware fault ?
could it be a driver issue ?
I'm using DVBViewer with TechniSat's standard drivers....and when it freezes it does not come back without reclicking a channel or closing and reopening...

Any ideas ?

Zaphod

SS2 can be flaky at the best of times. Is it a new card or old? Has it worked OK previously?

Supercell

Lots of the SS2's had issues with heating giving symptoms like this before failing completely.

You could try putting a pci blower fan beside the card and seeing if that helps(worked well for me when I used one of them).

Anchises

> Is it a new card or old? Has it worked OK previously?
It's been working solidly for more than a year ...........
It worked fine when the dish was pointed to Astra analogue.....

change *seemed* to occur when I pointed to Sky 28.2 E .....
Could the internal logic of SatFinder ignore dropout and try for up to 20 times before registering a *too* weak signal ??? Surely it would not report level ZERO , if that occurred ??

> try putting a pci blower fan beside the card
I'll try that and see ..........

SatFinders results seems so regular that heat issues seem remote.
The heat would not cycle cold/hot as the signal strength was tested ???


A.

Zaphod

Recheck connections on LNB.

Check to see if it is happening on all channels and not just high band ones > 11.7GHz.

Other suggestions are reseat in different PCI slot or try older driver e.g. 4.2.10 Remove other PCI cards to check for power supply problems.

SS2 can have problem with coils. joshyfun.peque.org/special/Coil_Replacement_Skystar2.pdf

Or check appearance of miniature resistor 220ohms, R17. And the capacitor near the (10V,100uF).

Anchises

Thanks Zaphod. I'll look at those possibilities.

Problem with adding a slot blower - no room without a lot of tearing out and reseating PCI cards ...........may take that 'under advisement' as the americans say (wonder what they mean by that ????)

I looked at FastFinder again and it has a 'levels' that displays the level over time. It's NOT at all as regular as i thought it was, at least not this evening.
uploaded a pic of the levels - no real pattern - so probably the SS2 is on the way out , PSU , old age, arthritis, ....

Maybe i should take HALs advice ..........
Put back in service and wait for it to fail !


A.

Zaphod

Going by that list the card seems mostly OK. 11720, 11798 are DVB-S2. The 3 mid-range TPs with low SRs are prob feeds and not active. However, according to lyngsat, 10891 carries ITV regions and should be active.