For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to have a fusion splicer. Fibre optics are just so cool but using patch cables is not convenient for any long runs as the ends are attached and from experience it only takes one disaster and boom fibre damaged and you can't repair it without a fusion splicer.
But used ones are still over £500 most of the time. And brand new chinese units are minimum £600 on amazon. Maybe cheaper on aliexpress but their dubious in quality and thats a lot of money for it to be total garbage. I heard the signalfire units need a mobile app for some reason.
So one evening I was browsing ebay and found a DVP-730 splicer. not a new model at all but an older chinese unit. But from what I have read it was an ok unit at the time. Seen other units like the PRO-730 as well so it was clearly rebranded a lot. The entire kit was £250 which is very cheap for such a modern splicer. Expect to pay that for like a 20 year old unit that is fully manual but the DVP-730 is automatic.
But with hardly any description it was a huge risk. But the photos showed it powered up. And even showed that it came with a lot of stuff. like the cleaver and spare electrodes. So I took a chance.
Unfortunately it had a fault right out the box. It wouldnt boot up like the seller had showed in photos. Instead I got this image
After like 50+ power cycles it did eventually power up. Whatever battery runs the RTC is clearly bad in my unit as the date/time was all out of bounds hex values. but the unit spliced perfectly fine and heated the splice protectors. I had done my first splice no issues.
Over the coming days I did a few more to practice but the unit was still reluctant to power up. I just knew the had to be some secret here. Clearly the unit is able to have a timer setup so it can be rented out or something.
Through shear luck I figured out that holding Up & Down together on power up would cause it to show a screen saying "connecting" clearly the serial port on the side could be used for some manufacturing purpose or maybe data downloading.
Knowing this I then tried even more combos until I found a new one
Up,Down and the Go button.
After holding those 3x on power up it showed a password screen. I am unable to replicate this so hard to show you what it looked like but it was prefilled with all 0s. So I just hit enter and it booted up like normal.
One power cycle and it booted fine
24 hours later. Booted first time.
Yep it seems like thats all it was. some weird lockout that I somehow disabled with that password
I am happy with my cheap fusion splicer. Might not be a Sumitomo but it will do for now.