Error 5 on NEC NC1000C projector

[Jared Addison]

I am dealing with a lamp, not striking situation. I have tried a couple of new lamps and I will get an error code 5 which means lamp not lit and I will also get error 702 which means 1 of the 2 lamps has not lit. I checked the voltage and it is not showing any volts going to lamp 2. Would this be a ballast going out?

[Leo Enticknap]

I would guess almost certainly yes. If a lamp that works OK in slot 2 will not light up in slot 1 (or vice-versa), I can't think of what else it could be, apart from a bad connection and a reseat needed.

Knock on wood, I haven't had to swap out a ballast in a 1000 yet, but I've done several in 900s thanks to the design flaw in the first model of lamp (NP-9LP02) whereby they'd blow to a short circuit, thereby taking the ballast with them. It's a nasty, fiddly job, with lots of pulling connectors from boards and disassembly needed in order to get to the ballast cards. I'm hoping that it's not as bad in the 1000.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Yes, it is most likely the ballast, but also carefully check the lamp socket, wiring and connectors to make sure nothing has burned up. Ballasts in these projectors rarely ever fail, but I had one fail in an NC-900 once back during the lamp explosion days. On that one, there must have been quick short circuit when the lamp blew. No idea how much a ballast is, but you can purchase one through MIT if you feel comfortable replacing it. Also, keep in mind that the smaller NEC's ARE difficult to work on, and can be rather time consuming. Iff you call in a tech, he will have the DCC program and will likely see more of what is actually going on, so that is my recommendation here.

Attached is an image of the NC-900 power section, Am pretty sure the NC-1000 is similar, although I never had to work on one. The ballasts are the two stacked boards right center. It was also a lot of work just to get to this point. And of course it was the bottom board that was bad.

Anyway.... Attempt at your own risk!!!! If you mess up anything else it's going to just end up costing more to repair.


NC-900 ballasts.jpg

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Also, there are error codes for ballast overtemp, and ballast UART failure. But you are not getting either of those.

[Leo Enticknap]

If the ballast board is completely fried, I guess its sensors could be generating false positives on other diagnostics.

Agreed - it's always the bottom one that fails. I've done around ten in total, eight or nine of which were the one below. Dissecting a compact NEC reminds me of those sadistic Japanese game shows: just as you think you're making progress and/or have cracked it, something else hits you!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I did about 16 of the first batch of projectors in the country. While only one ballast failed I had about half of them have the shorted wire on the lens mount. When it would short, you'd lose the lens driver board, plus you had to remove the lens mount from the projector as the wire was on the light engine side. By the time I did the second one, I was down to about 3 hours. If this happened the customer could generally still use the projector. The Lens mount ended up going all the way to the top. So placing a 2x4 under the rear legs and adjusting the feet got it lined up again. NEC actually had a service bulliten on this problem, and plenty of driver boards in stock at the time.