55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

[enkidu12]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

I tried reversing the leads. I placed the positive lead on the HV screw placement and the negative on each pin and got a reading. My meter came back with an average of 721. I'm not sure what that means though.

[tom66]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

How fast did you move? If your meter does not beep, you can only go at about a rate of around two to three pins a second. You need to look for a reading of under 50 ohms. Just one pin need be shorted for the buffer to be bad.

[enkidu12]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

I'm not moving very fast at all. I'm testing all the pins and with the negative lead on the HV and the positive on the pin my multi-meter never goes off 1. Am I placing the leads in the correct spots?

[tom66]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

Looks like the board may be good then.

[enkidu12]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

I'm getting the same results on both sets of boards. If the SD & SU boards are good then what do you think I would need to replace to fix the 7 blinking lights?

[tom66]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

I am thinking the SC may be bad. Unfortunately I'm not very experienced with these boards. tw2005 is a lot better on the later generation Panasonic plasmas (he's done V20 I think which is pretty similar to GT30, just has older plasma panel.) The latest one I've worked on is a G10... 2009 model.

[enkidu12]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

Gotcha. Well, thanks for your help.

[tom66]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

I recommend shouting his name three times as that may work. Also try sending him a PM.

[enkidu12]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

Lol. Thanks.

[tw2005]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

you can get 6 or 7 with the SC.

The meter results are a bit strange in the sense that you should get a reading usually 0.7 in diode mode. getting nothing makes me wonder if you're getting connection at the connectors.

I'll grab a good buffer I've got and confirm even though it's a different board the operation is the same.

I like the SC board bypass test for confirmation. that is the connector SC50(2 pins) short together, I use an alligator clip across them and power up. If the Sc is good the set will power on with no picture and no SOS blink. If it still blinks 6 or 7 then I'd go SC bad.

This is done with the 3 buffer board connectors removed incuding the 4 earth bolts on the buffer boards removed too.

Alternatively if the board is out bell out all the IGBT transistors and see if there are any dead shorts.

I just finished battling with a SC rebuild and just before it was finally fixed I had issues and swapped out one of the octal buffer chips at SC20 and it made it go back to SOS7 so that was something learnt that you can have nothing shorted and get a SOS7.

I'll have to see if there's a training guide for this series in case they've change something.

[tw2005]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

ok, how quickly I forget. I get open between gnd plate and buffer output on good boards.

Between VFO (pin 1 SD42, pin 2 SU41) and output you get about 0.7 on every connection, no shorts!

On the bad boards I get a reading from s/c to whatever it reads between gnd and out.

Sounds like they're good but I like to test the resistance on the input side as well. 5V line can go short as well.

I like to measure resistance at the SD42 and SU41 connectors.

This is a table as a guide for mine. You have to try the probes in both directions but I think blk to gnd plate and probe the connectors.

If you have the service manual I think there should be a block diagram for you to check the pinouts of your SD/SU.

[tw2005]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

Not sure if you have seen this but it does mention new to this series if Sc is disconnected it goes SOS8. So that's a new one but the SC50 jump with no buffers should confirm a bad SC if you stil get 6,7 blinks.

They have an alternate flow chart for SOS7 and they rank SC as most likely ( assuming the SD/SU are good which I believe they will be)

[enkidu12]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

So based on everything your saying, it seems to me that my SC board may be the culprit. I found a refurb through Panasonic Parts for about $100. A brand new one for $475 but im not paying that. Id rather buy a new tv. I think I'm going to take the dive and pick it up the refurb.

[enkidu12]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

Done. $109.34. If it doesn't fix my issue I have a 30 day return period then ill think about buying a new tv. I just hope this will work.

[tw2005]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

From the 55VT30 also 3D should be same as yours. looks like the pinouts are different for VFO etc to mine.

[tom66]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

There's no massive difference between 3D and non-3D capable panels, except the 3D capable one has a higher brightness and refresh rate.

[enkidu12]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

It works!!! I received a refurbished SC board in the mail today from Panasonic and installed it in the tv. I was very excited to see a picture. Well, a picture with black lines running across the screen. No worries. I just had to adjust the ribbons from the panel to the SD & SU boards so they had proper contacts. It only took me about another 5 or 10 minutes to make the fine adjustment but when I was done I had an awesome picture.

I'm very glad that forums like this exist. I was about to trash this tv and buy another before I started tinkering with it and did some reading online. At the end of the day it only cost me about $124 to fix. ($109 from Panasonic for the refurbished SC board and $15 for the SD & SU boards on eBay which I ended up not needed but are going to hold on to.)

Thanks everyone for your help!!!

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

17 months? For a 55" plasma? That is ridiculous and they know it.

Sounds no better than boards with GSC caps! WTF Matsushita!

Even an LCD with Capxon caps does majorly better than that!

[Clydeuk]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

I've only seen this thread so good that you solved it. Here's the fault finding process that I use. There is a 2 pin connector on the SC board, it is for test purposes. My fault finding process on these would be. 1. Check VS to GND to confirm no S/C. 2. Remove SU and SD boards (you can leave the FPC cables attached just unscrew them out of the way). Place a short in the above mentioned connector (I'll have to find out it's location) Panasonic call it a jig which is in reality a piece of wire; I use a screw, it does the job.

With all that as above, power up. If all else is well the set will start up without SOS, no display obviously but it clears the SC of blame and narrows you to the SU/SD.

Testing SU SD, meter probe on floating ground, then meter across each output from the ic's. You will find the culprit that way. In most cases all that has been needed is one board (and most often the SU board, and on that board mostly one or more of the top 3 or 3 ic's will be shorted.

I handled loads of these sets, the exact cause of failure is not really known, although quite a lot of ours were extended warranty sets with broken screens which had obviously been powered at the time. There's a chance the PDP is causing the failure or course (I had a new out of the box Panel that was shorted side to side and blew the crap out of the sustain boards)

I like to give the front of the display a good visual as you can occasionally see a pixel area that's been distressed, that's not good news for your new boards in that case, and your chances of getting a full display unlikely as well.

[Berge20]

Re: 55 inch Plasma Viera (VIERA TC-P55GT30) not turning on. 7 blinking red lights.

It works!!! I received a refurbished SC board in the mail today from Panasonic and installed it in the tv. I was very excited to see a picture. Well, a picture with black lines running across the screen. No worries. I just had to adjust the ribbons from the panel to the SD & SU boards so they had proper contacts. It only took me about another 5 or 10 minutes to make the fine adjustment but when I was done I had an awesome picture.

I'm very glad that forums like this exist. I was about to trash this tv and buy another before I started tinkering with it and did some reading online. At the end of the day it only cost me about $124 to fix. ($109 from Panasonic for the refurbished SC board and $15 for the SD & SU boards on eBay which I ended up not needed but are going to hold on to.)

Thanks everyone for your help!!!

Enkidu12, any chance I could touch base with you on how you got the part? I am having the same problem and at least when I called Panasonic, they wanted to charge me 850 for a new one and said they didn't do refurbished ones. Maybe I called the wrong people (?) and it appears to be out of stock everywhere else I look. Can't PM you directly yet (I assume board rules require certain time/number of posts), so wanted to try here.