Very rare early Sony Plasma; Should I rescue?

[Wizard256]

32" plasma sets do exist. I fixed one few week ago (generic). 32" and smaller were popular with people in western countries where space is a premium.

Cheers, Wizard

[crtfool]

Originally Posted by kx250rider

According to the searching I did, and word-of-mouth from my friend (Sony-authorized tech since 1977), and others, this is a very rare set. I guess they had problems, as these all died in less than a couple of years for one failure or another. Maybe these will be the CT-100 of 2025? Several people had no idea Sony ever made a small plasma (vs. LCD) set. Note that they don't say "Bravia or WEGA anywhere... Just "FLAT PANEL COLOR TV" on the top of the case.

Charles

Last year a coworker gave me a KE-32TS2 that just needed a power supply - it also was marked "FLAT PANEL COLOR TV" on the top of the case. I could not get any documentation or help regarding repairing the power supply, which was not built by Sony - it was a third party unit that Sony used. I attempted to repair the power supply - which someone already attempted to make repairs on, but could not find some replacement parts, so I bought a NEW power supply that had all the latest upgrades on eBay for $135. The set works perfectly, and was well worth the investment. I am keeping the old power supply as a parts donor to make future repairs if necessary.

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by crtfool

Last year a coworker gave me a KE-32TS2 that just needed a power supply - it also was marked "FLAT PANEL COLOR TV" on the top of the case. I could not get any documentation or help regarding repairing the power supply, which was not built by Sony - it was a third party unit that Sony used. I attempted to repair the power supply - which someone already attempted to make repairs on, but could not find some replacement parts, so I bought a NEW power supply that had all the latest upgrades on eBay for $135. The set works perfectly, and was well worth the investment. I am keeping the old power supply as a parts donor to make future repairs if necessary.

Two of these sets have blown power supplies, and one of them, evidently has a problem elsewhere in the set which caused a brand-new power supply board to blow. I'd be curious how to troubleshoot a problem like that, at the risk of blowing new boards. In the old days, we'd just look for a load on a line by measuring resistance to ground, and if none found, then slowly bring up a supply on the Variac and watch which line is being pulled down. That's almost impossible with these sets, and even if one WERE to find the problem, these multi-layer boards are a son of a beehive to work on. And this one has a whole load of BGA chips, which require a $50,000 projection soldering machine and an X-ray verifier to replace the chips. I think I'll chicken out on buying any new boards, at least for now.

Charles

[crtfool]

I was afraid to invest in a power supply for a 7 year old plasma because I did not know if the panel was shot. I also did not know if there were any other issues with the rest of the electronics. The power supply had a lot of SMD resistors that were buried under globs of silicone - these resistors would burn up as part of the board failure. The previous person that tried to repair it removed the silicone and replaced a lot of the SMD resistors with incorrect value standard resistors. He also made a mess out of the soldering on several power transistors.

The new power supply was a higher revision board, and most of the SMD resistors were replaced with standard resistors. Curiosity and the desire to have a working plasma forced me to take a chance and buy the power supply. I rationalized that this was an expensive set in it's day, and that it should be high quality considering that it is a Sony. I also did a search for reviews, and most of them were favorable.

I also noticed that the panel was not original because it was dated 2004, while the set was manufactured in 2003.

I was looking for a used one at half the cost, but those deals kept falling through because of screwy eBay sellers - 1 seller angered me so much that he received the first and only negative feedback that I ever gave in my 12 years on eBay.

[freakaftr8]

Charles, unplugf the Y and Z sustain boards from the power supply. Probe from ground on the connector of both boards to VS and VG, etc. if there is a dead short, goodbye power supply. Shorts are most likely residing in those IPM modules under the big heat sinks on the Y and Z boards. These boards ate to the left and right of the power supply. Z fires the plasma gas, Y gives the screen data.

[freakaftr8]

Oh yeah. Check vscan to ground onthe left board (ysustain)
This voltage input goes right into the y buffers ( 2 boards on the left connecting from the y board to the screen via ribbon cables. Look at the bga soldered chips. Do any of them have cracks or bubbles? If so most likely shorted and loading down the power supply something fierce. If the smps does not have a protection shutdown circuit ( visually you can tell if it does not if there are no opto-isolators (4 prong dudes with 2 prongs each side) then your power supply is toast. These sonys were most likely manufactured by nec.