First of all, I'm new here and I have to tell you experienced folks my knowledge of household and automotive electronics is pretty darn good but with these newfangled electronics, it's what you'd call rather limited. You know, as in the tube technology stuff my dad taught me. Now that you folks have all had a good laugh, I need some post stone age experience.
I have a Sanyo DS31580 tv that took ill. It starts up but the picture immediately flashes approximately two times a second which is accompanied by a snapping sound through the audio. I don't think this is "motorboating", or at least it doesn't sound like the motorboating of old tube type receivers. Yeah, I know, another laugh. The volume of the snapping sound is in direct relation to how high you have the sound turned up. After running a bit I can hear the flyback transformer whine for a bit and then quiet down. After several minutes of operation, the flashing and snapping increases in tempo to approximately four times a second. I've removed the little circuit board on the back of picture tube and the snapping sound continues, so I don't the tube has fizzled out. I can't see any visible signs of burnt components or arcing on the board or flyback transformer and the whole works has suprisingly little dust. My profound ignorance makes me think it's a high voltage problem but I leave that up to your more experienced minds. I know you can use refrigerants to cool down individual components to see if they're running hot and would that be applicable here? Since the flashing increases in speed, foolishness leads me to believe something is getting warmed up but don't ask me what. Maybe it's just my frustration at my ignorance that's warming things up.
Any of you good folks out there have any suggestions as to what to check and how to check it? Remember now, you might describe what these components look like because I still have a box of resistors that are as big as a cigarrette butt and not these little gnat sized jobs. I really hate to pay some guy $60 just to bring the set into his shop and let it collect dust for months while he uses it for a table eat his lunch off of. I think they must charge storage on them also........ The other thing is there's very little I can't do other than sing or swim and I hate to be foiled by some dinky little Chinese made "thing". Thanks in advance!