At the rate I'm going, I'm stacking up old Harmony remotes. My systems are still nearly all IR and I've had my Harmonies configured for going on 20yrs now, so It's just easier for me to buy a new remote and load my config on it.

We take care of the remotes, buttons are fine, no scratches, etc., but these things seem to have a way of dying on us. I've been buying replacements on eBay, but now that I've got 4 non-working remotes, I'm wondering if I can actually fix them. I'm hobbyist when it comes to electronics and soldering, I have a decent iron, a hot air rework station, etc. but that's only useful if I know what's actually wrong with them. So, here's a rundown of the remotes I have

670 #1 - USB port popped off and screen doesn't turn on. If I let it boot, the green LED and blue glow a visual indicators that it's working, and it is indeed sending IR. I ordered a new USB port from Digikey, but it'll be challenging to install, so unless I can fix the screen, I wasn't going to bother with the USB

670 #2 - Same screen issue as above except this one has a USB port. When I connect it to my Mac, it shows in system report just fine. So whatever the screen issue is, I assume is the same problem between these two.

620 - When power is applied, ether via batteries or USB, it boots and at the end of testing, there is a "System Error 1" that says to disconnect USB and remove and reinsert batteries. No matter what I do, I always get this error on boot. Looking online, this seems to have been an issue across Harmony's line at the time, and nothing I found showed any clue as to how to fix it, other than "warranty replacement". In this case, I wonder if there is a fuse or some other element that's causing the remote to think USB is connected when it's not.

700 - Completely dead. This one is weird, it was used on our basement TV which gets extremely limited use. I probably handled the remote more often to recharge the batteries than ever actually using it. Was working fine, then one day, just gone.

It'd be really helpful if I could find schematics for the 620/670 (which by the way have the exact same motherboard, just different stickers on the chips H620 vs H670, so I assume there's just a firmware bit that's set to change the ID and how many "devices" it would allow). I'd also like to see a rundown of the System Error codes and how those are tripped.

I know this forum is generally more user focused, but perhaps there's a fellow nerd out there that this can reach that could provide some guidance.

Also, I wonder what the longest gap is between posts on this forum is? I've got to be up there.... my last post was September 9, 2007 at 12:56