Homecast comes home

On Thursday the Homecast PVR returned home in working condition!  The electronics technician I dropped it into was fairly busy.  I dropped it in Monday, and then rang on Tuesday afternoon.  "Have you had a chance to look at it?" I eagerly asked.  Alas, no.  "Just so you know: we're missing it" and I left it at that.

On Wednesday I thought I'd leave him to his own devices and not bother a very busy man who has a phone glued permanently to his ear.  Well, every time I dropped in he was on the phone talking through procedures!

On Thursday morning he rang me.  Early.  "It was a couple of capacitors and a resistor, and it's all fine now - $99.  And I'm leaving early this afternoon at 3:30, so you can pick it up Friday if you want".

I interjected that I'd be there within an hour, and he said that'd be fine.  I'll say that'd be fine.  The thing came back home, I checked it out and re-installed it in its pride of place.

It had recorded a show at 8:30pm on the Saturday night, but it hadn't recorded "Insiders" which is on ABC1 at 9am on Sunday mornings.  So it failed between then and then.  Was there a power surge, Saturday night at all?  A couple of caps, a resistor and a pair of diodes in the power supply chain sounds suspiciously like a bit of a power surge to me.  Anyway, we'll never know, and the Homecast is back in heavy service as usual.  Didn't even get the VHS machine out while it was absent, although it was starting to look like it was going to be fired up again.  Sheesh, I wonder if it actually still works?