I've got a very early Luxor T835 which has on the whole been extremely reliable but has gone absolutely haywire in the last week (and it isn't because of the software updates - it still appears to be running v3.4).
Admittedly the disk is getting very full but has locked up on a daily basis for the last fortnight. Power cycling normally cures that for the evening and it's fine. Last night though, it locked up during playback, missed a whole bunch of recordings, repeatedly froze while watching live TV and also froze twice while deleting recordings.
Suspecting a power supply problem, I hooked up an external PSU to the hard drive which cured a lot of these problems, but now I've lost sound from live TV and recordings!
Is it salvageable, or should I recycle it and buy a new one?
Does anyone know of anywhere doing a good deal on T835 chassis, so I can swap the drives over?
Any advice welcomed.
Thanks.

Do you have another PSU to try, such as a multiway adaptor with adjustable voltage, etc? I've used one which had a 0.9A 12V output which worked ok for testing, but obviously wouldn't recommend for permanent usage as the offical PSU is rated at 12V 2A.

As you've lost the sound, how about the SCART switching - i.e. does your TV automatically switch to the correct AV channel when you turn the T835 on, as it normally would, or do you manually need to select the input? And with the HDD connected up normally, can you hear the drive spin up when you connect the power supply to the T835? Normally it will spin up within a second or so of connecting the power. I've fixed a T835 with both these symptoms plus no sound.

Thanks for all your suggestions Futaura - they have improved matters a lot but all is still not well.......

In the meantime, something has definitely failed on the board (although there's no external signs of this) as I started getting a disk drive failure message on startup. Checking voltages showed no 12v supply to the drive so I got round this by wiring direct from the back of the supply socket to the drive, but I still had no sound with the original power supply.
My T835 and DVD player go through a switched SCART box to stop the T835 interrupting the picture on whatever else I was using when it woke up prior to recording - a very irritating 'feature' of the early boxes I believe! Connecting it direct to either SCART on the TV made no difference to the loss of sound.
Substituting the power supply has made a huge difference though, restoring sound and some functionality, although it still has to be reset frequently. I can watch a recording and delete it OK, but it freezes when I try to watch the next one. I haven't tried to see if it records reliably yet.
Odd though that my (admittedly very limited) tests shows almost identical on and off load voltages between the two supplies, but the results speak for themselves!

I have located an orphan Ferguson T835 chassis (no box or accessories whatsoever) in my local branch of Comet - all I have to do is negotiate a bigger reduction than the measley £10 off new price (which they don't have and don't have any plans to get in again) they've offered so far!

Thanks again for your assistance - it's very much appreciated

It is probably unrelated, since swapping the PSU out has helped, but it may be worth checking the voltage on either side of R679 on the main board using both PSUs. As far as I can make out, this component is a very low resistance - in fact, on one of my T835s it is a 0 ohm, so clearly more of a linkage. So, you should be getting 12v on both ends. On the box that I have, this had gone open circuit, measuring 12v on only one end, killing the 12v power to the HDD and SCART circuitry (killed audio output and SCART switching - SPDIF audio still worked fine). Removed it, and soldered over both connections directly and it has been working perfectly ever since . That said, when I bought the unit from ebay, it was sold as the sound no longer working, but apparently everything else worked fine - when I got it, the 12v line to the drive was certainly dead too though, so maybe R679 can become intermittent before going fully open circuit. BTW, R679 can be found to the left of the CPU and directly beneath the two 8-pin ICs.

I should clarify that I refer specifically to the 16MB835N-3 main board, and not the newer version in case somebody else reads this - I'm sure yours is probably the old board though.

Comet are having a laugh, are they not? The prices they're selling the Ferguson boxes for are bad enough anyway. When you say no accessories, do you mean no remote or PSU too? Ebay is always worth a look and often you can get good bargains, especially when the seller puts in a rubbish title meaning it is less likely to come up in most searches . Of course, with Ebay there's always a risk - I tend to prefer buying used boxes from their owners rather than an over-priced "refurbished" box which may well have been bodged together and not tested adequately, who often try to sell off boxes, for unreasonable prices, with faulty main boards where they've stripped the HDD out completely (or swapped it with a faulty one) and separately sold the remote and/or PSU too.

Thanks again Futura for your always valuable and accurate information. I've got it working again (touch wood) but it's been a pretty torturous process.............

I checked R679 and sure enough it was open circuit, so I soldered a link across it at work, powered it up, and the hard drive dutifully spun into life. Imagine my disappointment when I got it home and after hooking it up to the TV found that it still either froze a few seconds after sound and vision came up or would run OK for 8-10 minutes and then freeze up!

I did manage to borrow another T835 and was marginally relieved to find the HDD from that ran fine with my chassis and PSU, yet my drive and that chassis acted up.
That to me suggested a problem with my HDD so I hooked it up to my laptop and ran WD's Data Lifeguard disk diagnostics on it, which it passed

In desperation I did a channel rescan as swapping drives between boxes had confused the timer recordings screen and was surprised to find all the problems had sorted themselves out!!! I've had it running for 5 hours tonight (both watching and recording) and it's behaved itself perfectly

The moral of this story seems to be always ensure there's completely free space on your hard drive!

.
As regards Comet, their reason for only knocking £5-10 off the Ferguson T835 with no remote or PSU was "Head Office won't let us as it's still a current stock item. When they say it's discontinued, we might take up to 35% off.". They had no stock (and even this orphan box wasn't showing on their computer), the main warehouse had no stock and the nearest store I could find showing stock online was Northampton - and I wasn't that desperate for one to trek up there. That sounds very discontinued to me!

Glad you got it sorted. Actually, I have noticed myself over the past few months that timers can sometimes get themselves into a mess and this alone can cause freezes, although I've been testing so many different software versions I've not really paid much attention as I guess it was due to channels moving, etc, and I've not had it happen for a few months now. But, certainly a rescan or first time installation fixes that.

I notice Comet now have a "new" Digihome branded T835 on their website, so although they may have discontinued the Ferguson, it seems they might have chosen to replace it with the Digihome instead which is of course the same apart from the front panel design.