Alright guys, finally I got some time to work on the beast to move things a bit forward.
After last few caps went it and some extra finishing touches - such as detoxing switches etc, I gave it a go.
Well... contrary to what I widely expected - I did not blow up
no magic smoke, sparks or anything, but started up rather smoothly.
The digits on the screen chaotically jumped for first 2-3 sec but then they all settled down at 0.00
Wow, I thought to myself, not even blew up but also zero`ed, what a decent start! so maybe, just maybe - it could actually work!
So set to DC, 10V range, stuck the probes in and grabbed my trusty 1.5v battery and... still the stable 0.00 on the screen
Switched over to Ohms, grabbed 56k resistor - and... still that nicely glowing zero.
see the pic.
Quick check on the continuity of the input signal – defo it reaches the boards…
A bit disappointing, but definitely not a surprise. Again, the fact that it started at all - is more than I expected.
Now, I guess, I will have a VERY long road ahead in trying to find what and where has gone faulty in there.
Now that I have the schematics (thanks to Peter!), there is a glimpse of hope; in their service manual Avo did a pretty good job in giving test points across the boards so is doable and finding a faulty component should be fairly straight forward, in theory. But what will make it 100 times harder is the state of the solder on the boards that is heavily oxidized, so on top of the suspected faulty components, literally any joint can be suspected as dried as well, and a ton of wires going across the boards - and their conducting state is also will need to be checked and confirmed.
to be continued....