BVM 20-F1E MAINTENANCE MENU IS BLUE?

[smigger]

Hello Everyone!! I have 3 Sony 20-F1E BVM's and one of them has the maintenance menu blue. This can't be accessed at all with passwords 1111 or 9999. Is this a firmware issue or is there a way around it? Also is the firmware on the ISR control board? I was thinking of replacing the ISR control board.

[philexile]

Hi Smigger,

I had this issue before with my 20" BVM. I noticed it when I was trying to update the monitor's firmware.

In my case, one of the NVRAM chips was bad in the main board. I was able to fix it by getting a working chip from another BVM's board (same family) and swapped the chip. Sony Pro Support had told me that one of the NVRAM chips was probably the issue, so I sent them a thank you follow-up email with the steps of what I did just as an FYI. I think I still have that email on my laptop at home. If this is the case, I'll post the contents later tonight. I'm pretty sure there were pictures too.

Best Regards

[smigger]

Thanks for your help Philexile. Looks like I may need a new board or part. The info you gave me should point me in the right direction though. Oh well it looks like I'm doing a bit of fault finding. Again thanks for your help..

[Monstermug]

Both the serial and hours are located on the ISR board. Replace that and the serials on the OSD will not match the unit. Also the hours will changed.

[smigger]

Thanks Monstermug. Looks like its going to be a repair job then.

[philexile]

Hi Smigger, here is that email to Sony Support. I think I spoke to Ian – he is a very helpful tech with CRT experience. Good luck!

The other weekend I decided to mess around with swapping some of the ICs from my good 14" BC board to the bad 20" one. Please see below:



I've circled the removable ICs on the image above. I swapped the first two on top, which had no affect one way or the other – so I put them back. The third one down was removable on my 20" BC board, but not the 14" BC – so I couldn't exchange those.

When I swapped the fourth and final IC at the bottom I had success. The MAINTENANCE menu item was no longer blued out and it had the up-to-date firmware that I had installed on the 14" BC board – 1.40. I checked the model number and service hours and they were both correct. To sum up: I took the fourth IC from the working 14" BC board and installed it on the bad 20" BC board. Everything is working great now!

Just out of curiosity, do you know what that fourth IC is exactly? I think you had said the NVRAM was probably faulty, so maybe that was it?

Thanks again for your help.

He never did confirm whether the IC was NVRAM or not. I assume it was though. Also, the two ICs at the top are EPROMs – so its very possible that those contain the firmware or other monitor specific software.

Reading through this email reminded me of a few things. When I inserted the 14" BC board into the 20" monitor the screen was all wacky and small – probably b/c the BC board was configured for a 14" BVM. Reseting it had no effect, so you can't swap boards from different sized monitors, even if they are the same model number. I think Ian said the board would need to be reprogrammed at their office.

Anyway, I hope this helps. It sounds like you have the same issue as me.

[smigger]

Thanks ever so much philexile. Absolutely brilliant help there. There is a Sony bvm 20-f1E ISR board on eBay £35 so ill snap it up. Good to see the chips are so easy to replace, No need for the soldering iron! Anyway, when I get the board I will update the thread with my results. I'm Sure some other people have had the same issue so this little tutorial you have posted will be useful to them too.

[mvsfan]

this made me think of something, I have a pvm-14n6u that works good. I have a pvm-20n6u that got the A board broken in shipping.

would these two boards be compatible except for the programming for the screen size? they sure look similar.

is there an ic i could replace on the 14" board with one from the 20" board to make the 14" board work correctly in the 20?

I have a service manual that covers both monitors. what it doesnt tell you though is what is different between the two boards. they have different part numbers.

the crt should be fine.

[Skips]

this made me think of something, I have a pvm-14n6u that works good. I have a pvm-20n6u that got the A board broken in shipping.

would these two boards be compatible except for the programming for the screen size? they sure look similar.

is there an ic i could replace on the 14" board with one from the 20" board to make the 14" board work correctly in the 20?

I have a service manual that covers both monitors. what it doesnt tell you though is what is different between the two boards. they have different part numbers.

the crt should be fine.

It most likely will not work. If the A board is the board on the very bottom that is the one with the deflection circuitry which is built for the smaller 14 inch CRT. Even with the BVM's you cant interchange deflection blocks from other models.

[mvsfan]

yeah its the one on the bottom. alright, I give up on getting this fixed. I had someone look at it and he didnt want to touch it said it was toast.

Im still waiting on getting my money for it. its been 5 months now.

[philexile]

Hello,

I was able to fix the blue MAINTENANCE menu that is an issue for some BVMs. When the menu is blued out, you can't access it. This is due to the software being corrupt and limits the calibrations that can be done to the monitor. I've also been told that eventually the software will completely fail and the monitor won't boot.

I posted about this previously in this thread – the fourth IC is the culprit.

The fix is as follows:

1. Get a good ISR board without a blued out MAINTENANCE menu, remove the fourth IC, and "copy" it to a PC with an EPROM reader.

2. Either get a new IC or erase your "bad" chip.

3. Confirm that the IC has been erased and write the backed up chip info to the chip.

4. Replace the IC on the ISR board and you should be good to go.

Here is a picture of the chip info which is sorta funny because it has the BVM menu items visible.



If anyone is having this problem, please feel free to reach out to me. I have a few extra chips that I don't have any use for.

Also, thanks to LeonK for the assistance!

[Finger]

Thanks Phil.

It helped me a lot lately!

[philexile]

No problem.

Also, I noticed that while the original chips can be erased and restored – they can't take traditional firmware upgrades through the monitor. They are likely still faulty and prone to failure. Its best just to get a "new" chip off eBay and use that.

[Blaasvis]

I have the same issue.
The BVM 20-F1E still works fine, however i would love to have a dump of an eeprom.
I have the chips here anyway, including a eeprom writer.

[philexile]

Hello,

So, I did a file compare (FC) in DOS of the BIN file that I dumped and Sony's v1.40 software. There was no difference.

You can just use that BIN file and copy it over to your replacement chip. Make sure you have the correct chip though.

Let us know how it goes!

[Mantrox]

Hey folks, im not sure if i have the same problem or not but, when i configure the input on any of the 2 input boards i have on my BVM-20F1E, the format options "Composite" and "YC" are blue and i can't select them.
Could this also be an issue with the control board?

Edit:
Extra info
BVM-20F1E
Firmware 1.31
Standard RGBS card
BKM-20D card

[philexile]

It's not. You would need need either a BKM-24N (NTSC), BKM-25P (PAL), or BKM-27T (Triband).

I wouldn't invest in one though - use RGB.

[Mantrox]

F!
Was curious to see how an N64 composite signal + comb filter looked.
Anyway, off to buy an rgb board.
Thanks for the info.

[Blaasvis]

Hello,

So, I did a file compare (FC) in DOS of the BIN file that I dumped and Sony's v1.40 software. There was no difference.

You can just use that BIN file and copy it over to your replacement chip. Make sure you have the correct chip though.

Let us know how it goes!

i have been searching the web to find the v1.40 software. But i am having a hard time finding it.
Can you point me to it ?

[philexile]

Hi, I'll send you a link. I'm not sure if Sony is comfortable with it being posted publicly.

[philexile]

Was curious to see how an N64 composite signal + comb filter looked.

I tried the D32's comb filter with a composite signal from a Super Nintendo. It looked very good for composite - almost like s-video. That said, its still composite!

Anyway, off to buy an rgb board.
Thanks for the info.

Yes, this is your best bet! Tim's board is amazing, especially with the new de-blur firmware. Highly recommended!

[Mantrox]

I didnt know they had implemented de-bluring on his most recent boards. Thats awsome!

/offtopic

[edomatic]

Hi all,

I also acquired a Sony BVM-20F1E recently and the picture is great but i also cannot access the maintenance menu (blue color)
Also, i do not have the "extended menu" option available
As i read here it might be related to corrupted firmware
I see it is possible to reprogram the chips on the control board (i have a EPROM programmer and EPROM eraser)
Can anyone help me out with this issue?
I am a tech myself so i can even go as far as de-soldering chips without breaking the board if needed, i just need to know what chips exactly needs reprogramming for this issue

I appreciate all the help i can get from you!

[Gnaahh]

Hi,

It's my turn to bring back this old topic.
I have a Sony BVM-14E1E with a blue Maintenance menu. I have just acquired the monitor and it has a low hour count (8400h). I wouldn't be surprised to have a dead NVRAM there. The FW version is already 1.40 and I get a bit confused with what is stored in the "fourth chip".
Does anyone have binaries for this chip, coming from a BVM-14E1 or BVM-14F1 (I think they use the same ISR board ?).

If anyone has a chip, I'd be happy to buy it from him/her!

Thanks!

Sébastien

[SquidDude]

Here's the dump from a 14F5E, it should work fine (the 5 just indicates that the monitor comes with a built in control unit, as opposed to the 1 models that don't)

https://github.com/ArcadeHacker/Dumps/t ... /BVM-14F5E

I'm pretty sure the ISR card is identical in layout between all Evergreen BVMs, so you'd be looking to replace IC3, it's socketed so it should be an easy repair.

[Gnaahh]

Oh, I missed your answer. Thanks!

In the mean time, I also found the binaries of FW1.40 from Sony. It seems that the binaries are directly written on IC3 so no need to dump all files from existing monitors. I compared dumps and binaries and the content is the same.

I still need to do the flashing but I'm pretty confident.

Dumps links are here and there is a Google drive with the original files from Sony here:
http://arcadehacker.blogspot.com/2019/0 ... wners.html

[Gnaahh]

Hi,

For the follow-up and potential future help, I messed up when reading the FW version when I wrote the first post. It was in FW1.04 and not 1.40 as I wrote.
So, a FW upgrade of "IC3" was needed. I did not need any dump file because the binaries given for the upgrades by Sony are simply copied in the EEPROM.
My BVM is now fixed, I can get access to the Maintenance Menu by moving to FW 1.40, only done by re-flashing the EEPROM to the latest FW.