Sony Trinitron KV-13FS100 No Picture After Service Menu Doh!

[Retromangia]

Hi Everyone,

I have a beautiful little 13” Sony Trinitron, model # KV-13FS100. Ever since I bought it years ago, it never saved the picture settings when you unplugged it from the wall. All the picture settings would always default to a very low setting, so I would have to raise them all to a normal level. Other than that little quibble, it worked perfectly and looked great as long as I kept it plugged in.

So last night I finally decided to try and fix it, and due to my negligence, turned this little annoyance into a nightmare.

After doing some research, I was able to get into the service menu. This is my first time ever using a TV’s service menu, and I completely underestimated the power of it.

Unfortunately, the very first time I entered the service menu, I had the TV set to RF/Antenna, so all the menu text was illegible, so silly me started pressing random buttons on the remote, not realizing I could do any harm.

After changing it to one of the video inputs, I was able to clearly read the service menu. All I was trying to do was save the current TV settings, so the colors wouldn’t reset when I unplugged it. So I hit “Mute”, then “Enter” on the remote to save settings, and the TV Turned off.

It hasn’t worked ever since.

The TV still turns on (you hear the nice “ka-chunk”), but does not display a picture now. When I flip through the TV Inputs and land on RF/Antenna, I CAN hear static like you normally would. So there is life in her.

The first time I pressed 8, then “Enter” on the remote to reset all USER settings back to factory, the TV kept turning on and off in a loop until I unplugged the power cable. Now however it doesn't seem to do that anymore when I press 8, then enter. So that was just a one time thing.

I’m really at a stand still right now. I've also tried resetting the SERVICE MENU back to factory defaults by pressing 0, then “enter” on the remote, but that didn't do a thing.

Any advice would truly be appreciated. I really want to bring this little beauty back to life.

Thank you so much,
Retromangia

[matt]

Hmm, saving the service menu setting shouldn't, by itself, cause the TV to shut off. Also, the user menu setting should be saved automatically by default. I wonder if there's something wrong with the EEPROM.

Do you get a blinking power LED when you turn the TV on? These TVs have error codes that can sometimes help indicate where the problem is.

[Retromangia]

Thank you for the reply. When I turn on the TV, most of the time the Power LED will blink 7 times then stop, and sometimes it will blink 5 times then stop.

According to the service manual, 5 blinks states:

Diagnostic Item:
- IK (AKB)

Self-Diagnositc Display/ Diagnostic Result:
- 5:0 or 5:1

Probable Cause Location:
- Viedo OUT (IC545) is faulty (A Board)
- IC001 is faulty (A Board)
- Screen (G2) is improperly adjusted.**
**Refer to Screen (G2) Adjustments in Section 2-4 of this manual.

Detected Symptoms:
- No raster is generated.
- CRT Cathode current detection reference pulse output is small


Hopefully this can help narrow down the problem. Thanks again in advance to anyone who takes the time to reply. I really do appreciate it!

[ASDR]

There's a huge amount of crap you can really screw up in the service menu. I don't know much about US TVs, but the European Sony models all accept number 2 digit codes right after service menu bootup that can configure and change quite a lot right away. See your service manual. If you just started pressing random buttons, that might be real bad.

Resetting things back to factory in the service menu can also be a REALLY bad idea. You might have made things far worse with that. It depends, but on various models here resetting certain settings back to default can brick your TV unless you can perform some more advanced recovery tasks. The idea is to write down the settings before you change them, reset to default does most likely not what you think it does. For instance, the same firmware is used in different TV models with different tubes, inputs, tuners, speakers, features etc. and the configuration tells the software what kind of TV it's installed in. If you mess that up by resetting it to some nebulous default, your TV might not even work anymore afterwards or do something outright damaging / dangerous.

Like I said, plenty of experience with EU Trinitrons, zero with US, so maybe things work different for yours, but considering that your TV already had a settings saving issue (EEPROM borked?), you have reset / changed random settings and the TV boots up with a couple of different error codes of the blinky power LED kind, I wouldn't know what to suggest.

Be lucky your didn't open up the TV and messed with its insides with the same amount of forethought, you'd have bigger problems!