Anybody have a datasheet or pinout for this Zoran ZR36707 chip? Zoran's website is pretty worthless, and the datasheet sites bring up sheets for different Zoran chips than the ZR36707. Are there any distributors that carry this chip (in case it turns out to be bad?) All Google comes up with are places that want you to send an RFQ. WTF? If they have parts in stock, why can't they just give a price and ordering information?
Mike
Hi!
Have you tried contacting them to see what they'd say?
DVD decoding is covered by many patents and licensing entities, and the DVD CCA would certainly like you to think that nobody except a licensed decoder manufacturer is to know how DVD encryption or playback works...but it might be worth a try?
Sometimes there is a mess of NDAs and other crap, other times you can ask and receive without too much trouble.
I doubt if you could buy just one, although you might talk Zoran into sending you a sample.
There sure are a world of these places. I don't know if they actually have the parts for sale or not, but they'd like to be in the business of liquidating what they do have, hopefully at a tidy profit. As above, they probably won't want to sell just one piece, and if they do, cost is likely to be prohibitive.
As it seems like this part is a DVD decoder SoC, have you checked the other parts of the player to be sure they are working? I've seen a lot of bad power supplies, some of which were fixable. Disc transport failure (especially in the optical department) is also pretty common...a typical symptom of this is failure to play a DVD while an audio CD will play perfectly.
Heat is another enemy of these devices. Most of them run hot and I've only seen a few that have any sort of heat spreader or heatsink. I have not seen any with active cooling, outside of those built into all-in-one home theatre systems.
William
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I don't really need to know the DVD decoding methodology, just need to find the I/O pins to probe to determine if the laser pickup or the decoder board is bad. It's on a multilayer board, so I can't follow the traces. This chip is an interface between the laser pickup and the big 200 pin SoC. I assumed they would be secretive about the big chip, as that's where the decoding takes place.
e yer
Yes, I ESR'd the caps in the power supply, they're all good. I even did the lytics on the processor board. The supplies were clean. The +/- 12 V were a little low, so I used my bench supplies to bring them up to 12V, no help. I also replaced the ribbon cable going to the pickup. The player stopped playing both DVDs & CDs over a few months time, (it's my mother-in-law's, it was working fine the last time we visited her) but every now & then, it will play CDs all day, cycling power several times, then the next day the same CDs just give "no disc" after spinning up and trying to focus 3 times.
yen
tre
Hi!
My guess is that the datasheet includes everything, and that they're unlikely to excerpt it. But you never know...and that was why I suggested just giving them a buzz.
Good to know and have that out of the way.
Couple of thoughts...and maybe you tried all of these...
What about flexing/poking/prodding/abusing the main board to see if the effect comes and goes? Have you tried putting it in a cold place for a while or using freeze spray? How about setting it near a sunny window and letting it warm up?
How does the solder on the connectors for the ribbon cable look? Anything questionable there?
William
On Fri, 5 Mar 2010 21:26:54 -0800 (PST), Mike WB2MEP put finger to keyboard and composed:
Google turns up several service manuals for devices that use that chip:
- Franc Zabkar
-- Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
2&btn...
Thanks, Franc,
I didn't think of searching by filetype, it sure eliminates all the useless chip vendors and other "noise". I've had to put this DVD player on back burner, and move on to another one I also ordered a ribbon cable for, one of those portables with the folding LCD screen. I was curious as to who made its chip set, as I didn't recognize the logo - a tall uppercase "M" with rings around the bottom, so I did some Googling on the part numbers. (It turned out to be MediaTek). I also found some service manuals for players using that chip. The SMs are actually more useful than the datasheets for troubleshooting. With so much integrated onto 1 or 2 chips, the basic design for different players using the same chip set is mostly the same. With the complete lack of product support on late-model DVD players, I didn't think of looking for service manuals, I just assumed there were none available.
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