| Steve220 | Posted: 19 May 2025, 06:42 PM |
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 Member Posts: 2 Joined: 19-May 25 |
Good Day ! My clock has been operating flawlessly for a number of years. Last week the clock's time display digits went completely blank. The date portion of the display operates correctly. The dimming appears to operate correctly. I am thinking that the Maxim display driver chip may have failed. Hs anyone else had this type of issue and has replacing the chip cured the problem ? Any help or suggestions will be most welcome. Thanks Steve ------------- |
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| mit | Posted: 20 May 2025, 11:00 AM |
 yeah whatever Admin Posts: 601 Joined: 4-May 16 |
That does sound like the Maxim chip has failed. The only other thing it might be is if some flux residue has slowly corroded one of the connections, I'm not sure if that's a thing that happens but a visual inspection and maybe continuity testing the solder joints might be worth a go. I haven't heard of a spontaneous failure like this before, but someone emailed me recently with a similar unexplained failure, with the digits fading away but a power cycle temporarily fixed it. I'm not sure whether they managed to fix it yet. If you do replace the MAX7219 chip, I would recommend replacing both of them, as there might be a brightness mismatch between the two halves of the clock otherwise. I showed how to replace the chips on the instructions page here. ------------- |
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| Steve220 | Posted: 20 May 2025, 02:39 PM |
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Member Posts: 2 Joined: 19-May 25 |
Thanks for the response ! I'm still leaning to the Maxim chip as the cause, but upon a little further investigation I have discovered : When removing power and restarting the clock the "time" starts counting just like any normal reset. The display gets to 10-20 seconds and goes blank. So know I am starting to second guess my diagnosis. Any thoughts are appreciated. Steve ------------- |
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