RCA F25442 picture goes to snow

wtomich · Guest

RCA F25442, when watching it the picture will go to snow, no sound. For the most part the set works fine, it's just after some hours of watching it, it will just go to snow. When it does, some other channels may work. Sometimes, if you turn it off then on it will work. Tuner??? Thanks for your help. If it is a tuner, where cab I get one? What do you think it will cost?

wtomich · Guest

Can anyone help? Please.

Guest · Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 9:55 am Post subject:

Take it to an authorized Thomson Service Center and they will know exactly how to correct your problem. It's a very common problem with the Thomson sets, but requires a bit of skill to repair it right. If you let it go, the eeprom might possibly become corrupted and then the cost of repair will be extreme.

wtomich · Guest

Thanks for the response. Can someone explain to me what is wrong and can I fix it myself. Or what to expect a repair shop to charge.

crx-si · Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 1

The tuner has cold solder joints.

guest · Guest

Repairing solder connections inside a modern tuner, on board, or discrete, is very fine work.
Tuners are made as small as possible, in order to cut down on Radio Frequency Interference. The printed side (solder side) of tuner boards are covered with tiny surface mounted chips. Melting the solder can dislodge these, and some are so small, you might not even notice.
Unless you have quite a bit of experience soldering very tiny circuts, you may not want to attempt this.
What you could try, is the 3 points that hold the cover on the printed side of the circuit board. Heat them up, enough to melt the solder, and a tiny bit more. Do not heat them too much, and add only a small amount of solder.
This may repair the connection of the pins below the cover, to the printed circuit.
An experienced tech knows all of the affected connections, and how to properly resolder them. They often add jumpers to bypass future bad connections, all in less than an hour.