Realistic SR2010 locked up with "L" displayed

[Pittsville]

I was using this receiver as a dish mover. It could store satellites by letter and number. A few days ago it froze up with an "L" displayed where the letter for the satellite should be. It won't respond to any button presses at all. I don't have a remote for it, which might allow me to do a reset procedure. I can't find a manual for it, or a Drake 924 which is said to be equivalent. Radio Shack has part of the SR2010 manual online but nothing helpful.

So, I was wondering if anyone might know what the "L" means on an old receiver like this. I had just extended the motor wire and the pulse wire to a length of around 200-300 feet. Shortly after this is when the trouble started. I tried disconnecting everything and leaving it unplugged for a while but it's still locked up.

I wonder if possibly a parental lock happened to it, and the "L" means locked? Or maybe it has something to do with an east or west limit, but I thought that isn't something that would lock up the receiver and make it unresponsive. I haven't looked inside of it. I wouldn't really know what to look for except maybe a fuse. It has one in the back, which was not blown. The receiver still powers up in the same state with the fuse removed. Maybe it's for the motor circuit?

I don't have much hope that it will ever work again but I thought I might ask for suggestions, including what kind of box I should get to replace the old SR2010. It's heavy, and it's huge, but it looked cool with a lot of led's on it and a lighted analog meter and it was fun to try to figure out where a satellite would be, using the counter. I figured that 10 clicks on the counter was equal to one degree, so if it was on 91W I could figure that if I moved it 40 points to the west, it should be on
95W and it was nice to be able to store locations, but I think those days are probably over now, until I get a new dish mover.

 

[FaT Air]

HOW TO TURN ON/OFF A PARENTAL LOCK
1. Go to the channel to be locked out or unlocked.
2. Press Parental-set to lock out or Parental-reset to unlock the channel.
3. The locked out channel can be viewed if the remote is used to select the channel.
4. The locked out channel cannot be viewed if the receiver is used to change channels, also the satellite cannot be changed.
http://www.orbitcommunications.com/Support/Manuals/drake_924.asp


If it is Parental Lock, looks like you'll need the remote.
Might just be time to retire it to the Museum of Antique Technology. GBox or a VBox time. (although they don't operate a servo feed)

 

[Pittsville]

FaT Air,

Thanks for your response. I have a Logitech Harmony remote that might have programming available for the SR201, but it is out on loan right now. Not to stray too far off of the subject but I have found that these remotes are nice to have when you get equipment without the remote control. They seem to have nearly every brand of equimpment ever made. You have to go online to download what you want to control but it's nice to be able to control older equipment that might not be worth buying the original remote for, if you can even find one.

I have been looking at alternatives for moving the dish, and I use a DMX741 so I don't need servo control. I do have some older LNBF's that I like to fool with sometimes. I probably wouldn't go to the trouble but I was thinking of using the remote receiver for an airplane that I crashed and using that to run the servo motor, but that would just be an exercising in playing around for fun, and not something I would use permanently because of the battery needing to be recharged in the receiver. I even thought about using one of the other servo channels and having the servo operate a switch to move the dish but then I would need a power supply for the motor out at the dish and probably some relays, and who knows what I would destroy next if I ever tried something like that.

I might open the SR2010 and look around in there. If I am able to get it working again I will post the results, but I don't have much hope of fixing it.My dish alignment is all messed up so I can't see anything right now. I tried aiming with the compass and setting the elevaton according to calculations a few times, then I went to trying to be lucky and just moving the dish and blind scanning but I haven't been able to aim at anything so far.