RCA F36665 PIP Board Source (was clicking sound at power-up, no picture)

Pull the PIP board out and there is very tiny fine crack in solder joint at one surface mount resistor out of two resistors voltage divider. This two resistor is responsible for trimming voltage output for the LM317 adjustable regulator mounted on small steel heatsink. Lose that and regulator cuts output and hangs the data bus causing the TV to do 3 strike and out thing. Regulator supplies 3.3V for the PIP IC.

The correct part name for this board according to Thomson is F2PIP.

Resolder this two small resistors. This will fix yours for SURE. Keep us updated! The solder crack is very fine and need strong magnifying glass to see it. Near one corner right besides the regulator on solder side.

Cheers, Wizard

The solder will fix it. Otherwise you can buy the entire board for around $51 dealer cost, $77 list. Part # 247480

The first time I opened the TV up, before posting the message for this thread, the PIP board seemed slightly crooked. That easily could have happened while I was pulling off the case, or I may have just imagined it. I inspected the board for cold solder joints, used a meter to check some connections, and didn't find anything wrong. On the optimistic hope that it was just mounted badly, I re-seated the board, put it back together, and the set worked again... for about 6 hours. Then it went back to clicking.

I posted on here, and on Jason's and Ron's responses, I pulled it open again and re-soldered the LM317 and the surface mount resistors near it. That seemed to do the trick, it was working great. I figured I'd wait a couple of days before posting my results for the benefits of others.

Today, I've got a new problem, audio with no video. The menu works fine, so I'll have to start searching again to find out what's going on. I'll post my results on here again, along with the links that helped the most, in case it helps someone else out.

Usually the A/V board is partially unplugged for loss of video on that model. Sometimes when not being careful putting the back on correctly, the main board can be broken at the connector connections.

Right on! That's one problem solved.

Open it up again and pull the chassis out. Look at bottom of circuit board for bad solder joints where blue connectors are for the F2PIP board. Otherwise press the board down firmly and making sure the connectors are latched, they have catch hook on each blue connectors.

I remembered there was another problem with no picture, menu working was also the F2PIP board not making good circuit.

While at it,

Look for L14401 coil (marked as L4401), is a dark grey round bar with gold wire wound around it one layer with two red drops on it. I bet this one have hot melt glue around it. Remove coil and get hot glue scraped off, clean out two holes for that. Solder coil back in. This should fix the no picture.

Cheers, Wizard

Ok, enough QA time has gone by, I'm much more confident the set is working now.

The last problem I had was audio with no video. I pulled the PIP board out and inspected the connectors on it and on the main board. They looked fine and tested fine, so I put the board back in, and this time I cinched down the metal tab to make sure it was snug. That was it, perhaps it's not as snug in its old age.

For the next guy with a problem, in addition to this thread, the following was useful:

Keywords: F36665, PIP, no picture, clicks

Thanks again guys.