SamyGO

I am new to the forum, I don't have any real experience in repairing TVs, so I am kind of clueless at the moment. I used to be a computer repair technician for a few years and I dabble in electronics as a hobby. So here is what I need help with:

I have a Samsung 32" LED TV, model number UN32D5500RFXZA, version H306, that I acquired with the hope of repairing it.

When the power cable is plugged in, the LED on the front panel slowly blinks 6 times and then does nothing. If I try turning it on by pressing the front panel on/off "button" it does nothing, if I try turning it on with the remote control, the red LED will rapidly flash as long as I have the remote control button depressed.

So, here is what I have done so far to troubleshoot. I read that sometimes units can be "confused" by the remote, so I took the batteries out for a day, put them back in the remote, and tried again, same results.

Then I read somewhere that faulty capacitors on the power supply board can be the culprit with LCD TVs that won't start. So, I carefully researched every capacitor on the power supply board (there were 11 in total) and bought new ones that met or exceeded the specifications of each capacitor installed on the board all of which were prime spec parts (all Nichicons or Panasonic capacitors) and soldered the new ones in. I reinstalled the board after the new silastic had time to cure, and exact same problem, the red LED blinks 6 times and then nothing else. I should be more specific here, I only replaced the aluminum electrolytic capacitors, I did not replace any of the film capacitors because while I could be wrong, I don't believe they are common failure points.

So, I began to suspect something is up with the main board. While researching the problem, I stumbled upon this site. I tried resetting the EPROM by shorting the SDA and VCC pins on the system board while powering up. Still the same problem.

I am at a loss on how to proceed at this point, I have a sneaking suspicion that this TV was bricked by firmware update that failed, but I have no way of confirming that. I looked up replacement system boards for this TV and they are quite expensive, I really don't want to have to buy a new system board.

I did notice that the board has headers for an SPI interface that looks like it routes to a Winbond chip and headers that appear to route to an Atmel chip. I actually have a reader/writer coming next week that is capable of interfacing with these chips. Does anybody know if it is possible to reflash the chip(s) using such device and if so, where can I obtain the ROM image files to accomplish this task?

If anybody has any suggestions or recommendations for me or notices anything I may have overlooked during the troubleshooting process, I would be extremely grateful.

Thanks in advance,
Justin

Hi, looks like TV was really bricked during firmware upgrade procedure. You should check this topic. If you get programmer, you could play with switching firmwares trough micom config, but probably this helps you just partially - even if here still exists alternative firmware, you get cyclic reboot at every ~30-50 sec.

To get well with problem, you should connect ExLink cable to the debug port of TV (VGA or Service, ExLink port) and if you`re lucky you should see some readable text. If you get silence, you still can switch debug on and get cable working by changing bytes on SoC eeprom. If you desolder these chips (yah, you have to identify them first), place some socket to the mainboard and then experiment with programmer.

What if you finally switch partitions (and probably get cyclic reboot)? Don`t know. No howto is ready for that situation, depends what you can do on TV at the time before TV goes to reboot. Honestly, no big hope for repair.

Even if you see some jtag ports, here is nothing about how to repair TV this way.

btw, one more reason for brick - "micom upgrade" in service menu touched, in this case probably no solution.

Hello forum, it has been awhile but I thought I would give you guys an update.

Unfortunately, I got nowhere with the flash programmer and I never did try the ex-link cable. I did replace a few more of the passive components on the power supply board, which didn't help, although it wasn't all for nothing, I suppose I do have some much higher quality capacitors on the power supply board than the Samyoung junk that was on the board.

But, I did finally repair the TV, I waited very patiently for the sole vendor that was charging a reasonable price for a replacement mainboard to get the part back in stock, and bought a new mainboard. I replaced the mainboard and the TV fired right up. So, my suspicion that the TV was bricked has been confirmed, I have no idea if it was caused by a failed firmware update or if there was a faulty component on the mainboard and, honestly, I don't care at this point, but the bottom line is that the TV is now up and running.

Thanks for the suggestions on repairing the TV, I did appreciate them.

Yours,
Justin