Is my PVR-9200T totally knackered?

Tony Norton

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Hi All,

have trawled through the PVR-9200T specific queries and not been able to find any reference to my current problem.

Every night I put our nearly 8 year old Humax on standby, so the fan is not whirring away all night, and bring it out of standby in the morning. This morning, however, it refused to play nicely. It ran out of extended warranty in 2012 so I can't see Humax being of any assistance.

Symptoms are: -

Press standby button, display comes alive, goes through the "BUOV" stage (I think that's right, the display isn't very clear) then goes to the 4 hyphens, at which point it displays "[Please wait]" on the TV screen, and then freezes at that stage.

All connections have been checked and double-checked.

I have tried the "Power off, Aerial out, Power on" route, to use the TV as just a monitor, but it still goes no further than "[Please wait]".

Is there any other trick I can try, or must I consider my old faithful to be totally defunct?

If so I would obviously go for an HD replacement, but should I opt for 320GB, 500GB or 1000GB? We rarely have as much as 2 pages of recorded programs, as most of our recording is work-around program clashes, and the longest program would be of the order of 2 hours. I don't know what the capacity of the PVR-9200T is. Any enlightenment available on this score?

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can offer.

Tony N
 
The normal capacity of the 9200T is 160Gb, although a 320Gb was available, and users have installed 500Gb or more.

Remember that HD programmes take about twice the HDD space than SD ones (roughly 4 times the resolution but twice as efficient at encoding) with better audio capability. You would want to use HD versions channels whenever available.

As to the 9200 not booting issue, if you are confident enough (or know someone who is), disconnect the internal HDD and try booting without. If it starts you should be able to use it as a freeview receiver.
From there, if the HDD still works, you might be able to connect it to a PC and run some diagnostic/repair utilities to reset the data on it to a working state. If you really wanted, the programmes might be recoverable here, though I note you only used it for timeshifting.
Suitable replacement harddrives (IDE connection) are difficult to obtain now, but if the PVR works that's something you could look at.
 
The normal capacity of the 9200T is 160Gb, although a 320Gb was available, and users have installed 500Gb or more.

Remember that HD programmes take about twice the HDD space than SD ones (roughly 4 times the resolution but twice as efficient at encoding) with better audio capability. You would want to use HD versions channels whenever available.

As to the 9200 not booting issue, if you are confident enough (or know someone who is), disconnect the internal HDD and try booting without. If it starts you should be able to use it as a freeview receiver.
From there, if the HDD still works, you might be able to connect it to a PC and run some diagnostic/repair utilities to reset the data on it to a working state. If you really wanted, the programmes might be recoverable here, though I note you only used it for timeshifting.
Suitable replacement harddrives (IDE connection) are difficult to obtain now, but if the PVR works that's something you could look at.
 
Thanks for that nvingo,

I took the HDD out and hooked it up to my PC, which didn't recognize its presence. I assume, therefore, that the cause of the long delay on [Please, wait], I let it sit for 4 hours like that and there was no change, was down to the firmware trying to access an HDD that was no longer functioning.

I have several old IDE drives that I can try, so I've formatted one of them FAT32 to see if the system picks up on it, and intend to try that tomorrow.

Cheers

Tony N
 
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The HDD in the PVR9200T is in a proprietary format, which the PVR initialises any new HDD to.
When a PVR formatted HDD is connected to a PC it won't appear as a lettered drive (eg D: ) so check in the disk managment for an unknown drive. You would then need special software to read/write it.
Obviously if the connections are correct (is the IDE controller enabled in bios for motherboard controllers, are the HDD jumpers for master/slave/cable-select set) and it's not recognised it is effectively kaput. You can verify this once the PVR has initialised the spare HDD.
 
Hello again nvingo,

the problem has been sussed. It was an HDD failure! The 40GB HDD I formatted FAT32 proves it.

I had to switch on holding the standby button in as it booted, then I got a message on the TV screen "Do you want to format a harddrive?", clicked [OK] and almost immediately got the "Format complete" message. The Humax obviously likes FAT32. I will, of course, change that for a larger HDD.

One thing you may be able to help me with though, there is on the 9200 MoBo a slot that looks as though it was intended to be for a 2.5" SATA drive. It doesn't appear to be 'user accessible' as its open end is hidden behind a blank part of the front panel. Is it possible that the PCB design allowed for a 2.5" SATA harddrive but they opted to use what was, in 2006, the cheaper IDE drive?

If that slot is for a working SATA HDD it seems I have several options (from dearest to cheapest): -

1) Buy an HD Humax, or similar.

2) Buy a 2.5" SATA drive.

3) Buy IDE/SATA adapters (which I don't have) and fit a 3.5" SATA drive (which I have).

4) Connect a 3.5" SATA HDD via M/F cables (which I have) to the connector for the 2.5".

What do you reckon?

Cheers

Tony N
 
Hello again nvingo,

the problem has been sussed. It was an HDD failure! The 40GB HDD I formatted FAT32 proves it.

I had to switch on holding the standby button in as it booted, then I got a message on the TV screen "Do you want to format a harddrive?", clicked [OK] and almost immediately got the "Format complete" message. The Humax obviously likes FAT32. I will, of course, change that for a larger HDD.
The PVR doesn't care what format the drive was before it was attached, it just writes its own directory structure to initialise (format) it, which it refers to when recording and playing.
One thing you may be able to help me with though, there is on the 9200 MoBo a slot that looks as though it was intended to be for a 2.5" SATA drive. It doesn't appear to be 'user accessible' as its open end is hidden behind a blank part of the front panel. Is it possible that the PCB design allowed for a 2.5" SATA harddrive but they opted to use what was, in 2006, the cheaper IDE drive?
I'd never heard of that before and I doubt when the PVR9200T was designed (well before 2006) there was any consideration to the possibility of using SATA drives, either 3.5" or 2.5".
If that slot is for a working SATA HDD it seems I have several options (from dearest to cheapest): -

1) Buy an HD Humax, or similar.

2) Buy a 2.5" SATA drive.

3) Buy IDE/SATA adapters (which I don't have) and fit a 3.5" SATA drive (which I have).

4) Connect a 3.5" SATA HDD via M/F cables (which I have) to the connector for the 2.5".

What do you reckon?

Cheers

Tony N
Option 1 is that which most users opt for.
Option 3 is the one that would keep the 9200 going but it now struggles in other areas with the number of channels in the EPG causing slowdown.
 
One thing you may be able to help me with though, there is on the 9200 MoBo a slot that looks as though it was intended to be for a 2.5" SATA drive. It doesn't appear to be 'user accessible' as its open end is hidden behind a blank part of the front panel. Is it possible that the PCB design allowed for a 2.5" SATA harddrive but they opted to use what was, in 2006, the cheaper IDE drive?

If that slot is for a working SATA HDD it seems I have several options (from dearest to cheapest): -

If I remember correctly the slot is intended to take a CAM (Conditional Access Module). A suitable CAM gives access to paid for services using a smart card (as you get on a Sky box).

Humax often use the same case for kit intended for different countries.
 
If I remember correctly the slot is intended to take a CAM (Conditional Access Module). A suitable CAM gives access to paid for services using a smart card (as you get on a Sky box).

Humax often use the same case for kit intended for different countries.

Hi both,

Graham,

I got out a small mirror to have a look at the connector in that slot and it confirms what you suggested, it is definitely not for an HDD.

nvingo,

having never, ever, had an HDD go down on me I hooked up, again, the original 160GB from the PVR to my PC and, although Win7 Pro didn't 'see' it, my Acronis Disk Director did, as an un-initialized drive. I intialized it in Acronis, formatted it FAT32, and put it back in the 9200, which asked me if I wanted to format a hard drive, which happened virtually instantaneously, and everything is now behaving itself perfectly - with the original HDD! What happened to make it fail in the first place I haven't a clue, unless it just overheated due to the 7 years' plus accumulation of dust, which I obviously blew out.

Anyway, everything is now, for the time being, sorted. An HD version will have to wait until I have a bit of spare cash.

Thanks to you for all the assistance given. I think we can now consider this matter closed.

Cheers

Tony N
 
...and everything is now behaving itself perfectly - with the original HDD! What happened to make it fail in the first place I haven't a clue...
That's an excellent outcome.
I suspect corruption of the data on the HDD which booting didn't like.
 

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