My Linea 2AV masked control box has recently started playing up. The single shot (far left) button no longer lights up if you press it. All the other volume buttons work, and both left and right groups are the same. I turned the machine off for a few minutes and tried again, and the single shot button worked, but the next time I used it it was off again, so it is intermittent. I have tried reprogramming the times, and once again all the otehr buttons respond as they should. If you try to program the single shot button, when you press it to start, no water flows, but when you press it again to stop the shot, the light goes out as though it has been programmed.

I have repaired electronic devices before so I'm equipped to work on it, but I would appreciate any pointers I can get before I start. Does anyone have a circuit diagram of the Gicar masked box? Does anyone know if there are 8 separate circuits? (1 for each shot time x 2 for 2 groups) If so it seems surprising that both single shot circuits have gone at the same time.

Any help would be appreciated.

A lot of the buttons come into the control board via a 74 series latched 8 to 1 mux. Trying to be clear though, does the single dose fail on one group, or on both at the same time?

-Cecil

I would have a play and see if you can isolate an intermittant fault with the offending pushbutton. Maybe have a crack at replacing it with something similar from jaycar etc. I note that allpress have replacement mask boxes at only about $150.

At the time that it fails, it is both groups that behave in the same way; i.e. I can't pull a single shot on either group.

I have opened up the box and the board all looks very clean. I have sprayed all connectors with lubricant, and so far it has worked every time, so hopefully it was a bad connection.

Thanks Paul for the heads up on a replacement box from Allpress. I had spoken to Ben previously but he hadn't mentioned a replacement, but i didn;t specifically ask him if he had a new one; just about old ones. Hopefully all is working again and I won't have to replace it.

On another tack: I took the opportunity of insulating the boilers and I'm pretty pleased with the results. It is much quicker to warm up from cold, and as I switch off a lunch and switch back on again at night, it retains a fair bit of heat over that period, so warm-ups then are really quick.

If you still have the problem get a high-res frontal shot of the control board with good lighting and no flash so I can see the numbers on the chips. Then I could tell better where you may be having the problem. Or if you spend the 150 for a new one you can send the dead one to me to check out.

-Cecil

Hi Cecil, thanks for that kind offer. So far it is all working as it should, which is great. I took your advice and finally got around to insulating my 2 boilers; I hadn't realised you were the OP of the insulating thread.

If I had a picture I could probably help you isolate your problem. One thing to check, if you have not already, is to exchange the button boxes between the groups, i.e. change group 2 to group 1 just by exchanging the wires on the back of the keypads. This will tell you if it is the keypad or the electronics.

The keypads are only momentry switches that the processor picks up when pressed (the group 1 keypad also has a timer circuit for the hot water dispense that is actually attached to the keypad board). If it is the elctronics then it is a bit more complicated. If it is, the 1st thing to do is to re-flash the eprom and see if the software was corrupt.


Bill C

NickA wrote:I hadn't realised you were the OP of the insulating thread.

Far from it, just that time. The Buffalo Snow as insulation came up a couple of years ago, I just happened to finally get some in stock at the local mega-store so I decided to give it a check out.

-C