PACE box problem - Possible fatality?

[samtasm]

Hi, I'm just new to the forum and was wondering if anybody out there had any advice or something I could try to resurrect my PACE (4000 model I think) digibox. Quick background story: Used to have Jerrold with "Baby J" but died after 6 months, had to get it chipped, then box only worked for 6 hours at a time before needing reset (had to be powered off and on and left for 20 minutes for channels to come back) altho 3 or 4 friends with same thing were OK? It was as if I was getting mini-zapped every 6 hours? Decided to unplug everything and get a PACE box with Funcard 4, altho not subscribed to digital was told it would work. Worked great for couple of months then seemed to get zapped twice a week which I couldn't handle anymore. Friend then done me an "OPOS" card which would auto-update and this worked great for about 4 months until now. Couple of days ago, switched on TV and it had nthell "service in progress" screen displayed? Looked at the PACE box and it had "PAt" displayed on the panel, whole system totally unresponsive? Unplugged everything, left for a while, still the same. Friend suggested opening box and removing red jumper, plugging in just the power and leaving for an hour then put jumper back, cable feed in and OPOS in and power back on. Did this and the screen was just jet black with the word "Tune" on the PACE display. Watched it for half an hour but nothing changed? Went to bed and came back in the morning to check and screen was back to the "service" page (displays triangle with the exclamation mark inside) and "PAt" on the PACE display. Again, friends with same setup are OK so I think card is still fine, must be the box? I think nthell have been out to get me for a while (6 hour reset on chipped Jerrold when closeby friends are fine?) and somehow they have managed to fry my box? Stuck old Jerrold back in the mean time and it works fine altho picture quality seems to have degraded and screen flickers a bit and back to my 6 hour timer! I read somewhere recently that the "PAt" display on the panel means "Program Allocation Table" not sure though. I also tried using the up and down buttons and the service button etc. to try and get into engineer menu I heard about to see if there was some kind of reset I could perform but that doesn't work either. If anybody has any ideas it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks...

 

[bammy]

If you removed the red jumper you will have lost the netid and will need to reset it. You can do this in two ways - either by using libdebug (you will need to buy a scart to serial interface for this) or by programming a funcard to set the netid. As to why it stopped working in the first place - are you sure the box is right for your area? Using an out of area box can cause problems when software updates are released by the cable company. Also are you sure your box is sunning the latest software and doesn't have the anti-update mod done? (Look in the engineers menu to check the software CR number).

 

[samtasm]

Thx for quick reply bammy. I still have my old Funcard 4 so I guess I could get that re-written if you know of a post or a guide to making one for setting the netid. Unfortunately I've no idea if the box is for my area or not so it may be a software update which has killed me, makes sense with the "updating service" screen that is permanantly displayed. The other thing is that I cannot get into any engineer menus? Tried holding in the up and down buttons and pressing service but nothing happens? Don't know if there is another way to try? Pretty sure it is a 4000 altho I have only seen pictures of other 4000's on the net and this is identical but could be a variation on the theme? I have a closeby friend with a similar box (acquired from the same source) who lives within a mile and is ok altho he has a tit card instead? It's all sounding rather ominous for me I think, might just have to take hammer to the whole thing when I get back from work!!

 

[bammy]

4000 / 4001 / 4010 all look virtually identical so it can be hard to tell them apart. It could be that it's a 4001 which are known to have problems getting stuck in 'tune' when there is a software update. This can sometimes be caused if your signal is too weak to too strong - check the SNR ratio in the eng. menu (should be above 30dB and below 35dB). To get into the EM, turn the box off at the wall, hold in the up/down keys on the box and power box back up at wall. Continue to hold the up/down keys in until the EM appears, then release the keys and use left / right to scroll between the pages. If your SNR is outside this range you might get it to update on another cable feed (e.g. friend or neigbour). On the other hand it could be a hardware fault on the box itself - do a search on 'tune' and you'll find it's a common problem.