u/solidsnakex37

I'm leaving the country in 16 days, my visa expired March 28th and I tried to renew it twice but both times I went to the BI office it was a holiday so I gave up, planned to deal with it all now before I leave.

I've been here since March 2025, can I just deal with it all at the airport? Or do I have to deal with it before I get to the airport?

I'd go to the BI at SM Aura in BGC, but kinda wondering if I can just do it at the airport instead.

Anyone have experience with this?

What I'm hoping for from anyone who's worked on the VH2 chassis:

1. What does Sony call the panel-management / sub-MCU board in the service manual? The kernel driver names it "BE / Backend Control"; I'm trying to map that to the actual board designation for parts ordering (G board? PA board? part of the main?).
2. Have you seen this signature (display works, backend-control SPI hung, intermittent 8-blink, dead wired ethernet alongside it) actually resolved by replacing the T-Con, the panel-management board, or only by a panel swap? Want to triage cheapest-likely first before authorizing.
3. Anyone know the IR sequence to enter service mode on a VH2 / A90J so I can read the actual blink-code error history? Sony's com.sony.dtv.system.crashlog@1.0 service has the data; it lives in /data/vendor/sony/... which non-root ADB can't touch on a user build, so service mode looks like the only path.
4. Encompass shows parts here: https://sony.encompass.com/model/SONXR83A90J - if you've ordered the BE-side board for an A90J, what part number was it?

Happy to share the raw bugreport, dropbox, thread dumps, and Scalar API dump with anyone who wants to verify, I have about 30 MB of captures archived. Sony support has been unhelpful which is why I'm here. Thanks.

My Diagnosis so far:

83 inch Sony Bravia XR-83A90J, 2021 OLED, out of warranty. Symptom is the classic 8-blink red standby LED protection code, intermittent. The TV powers on and can display picture for hours or for about 20 seconds before it shuts off and 8-blinks again. The pattern is asynchronous, not tied to time-on or specific content. Separately, the wired ethernet port is dead on two known-good cables on two different switches; wifi works perfectly. Audio is unaffected (eARC passthrough to a Denon AVR-X3700H) and HDMI-CEC negotiates normally with the AVR, a PS5, and an NVIDIA Shield. Topology is Shield to Denon to TV HDMI3, so the TV is purely a display in this chain.

I was able to enable network ADB on the set and pull a full Android bugreport plus thread dumps, dropbox, dumpsys, etc. The Android side is healthy in every measurable way. Scalar REST API returns full system, network, picture-quality, and sound state. UI navigates fine when there's picture. No kernel panics, no tombstones, no native crashes anywhere in dropbox or pstore. Boot reason is plain reboot. pstore/ramoops empty, no SYSTEM_LAST_KMSG. The OS is not crashing.

Hypothesis-killer for any software cause: during one of the outages, Sony pushed an OTA that upgraded the TV from Android 10 (QTG3, fw 5.5.0) to Android 12 (build STT2.230505.001.S100, fw 5.7.0, Nov 2025 security patch). Post-upgrade the fault is identical in every measurable way. A major Android version bump fixing zero symptoms eliminates the remaining software hypothesis. Sony's own OTA infrastructure tested it for me.

The actual fault signature, which is why I think I'm in the right place to ask: load average pegged at around 39 while the CPU is otherwise about 80 percent idle. That's not CPU load, it's roughly 38 kernel threads stuck in uninterruptible D-state, and the named set is the giveaway:

[SonyBECtrlSpi]      D   <- SPI bus thread to the "Backend Control" subsystem
[SonyBECtrlError]    D   <- backend error-handler thread - itself wedged
[SelfDiagHandle]     D   <- the self-diagnostic thread that drives the blink code
[MLVdo_thread]       D   <- main video pipeline
[SonySOPQCtrlVdo]    D   <- Sony picture-quality (SOPQ) control
[SonySOPQCtrlUpd]    D
[SonySOPQCtrlSys]    D
[FRC Unmute]         D   <- frame-rate conversion (MEMC)
[NR main loop]       D
[DI Film Adaptiv]    D
[AudHDMIParser1/2/3] D
[Hdcp22Thread1/2]    D
[VsyncThread]        D   <- graphics composer vsync

Thermal HAL never initializes (HAL Ready false), zero /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone* entries. On the A90J the temp sensors are read over the same backend bus that's hung, so the absence of temp readings is itself consistent with the diagnosis rather than a separate issue. Also aud_cpupost is pegged at about 25 percent sustained CPU continuously, which is absurd given the TV is purely a display in this topology, and reads as collateral from the audio offload path coordinating through the dead backend.

My read is that the SoC issues control transactions to the panel-management sub-MCU board over its SPI bus and they never complete. RT driver threads block forever in D, SelfDiagHandle can't run cleanly, and the MICOM falls back to the physical 8-blink protection code when whatever threshold (panel power sequencing, ABL, thermal proxy on the dead sensor path) gets crossed. The primary video timing path to the panel clearly still works, since we get picture when it's up, so this isn't the T-Con video timing dying outright; it's the control/management side of the panel hardware. The dead ethernet on the same chassis is probably a related mainboard / interconnect issue but I haven't proven that.

I bought a brand new XR-83A90J in April 2024 for $3000. It's been dying in me while watching TV, it shuts off and blinks a red light 8 times. There doesn't appear to be any repair services offered by Sony, which is a real let down. How can I go about getting this repaired?

I am located in Colorado, I could try and order parts and fix it myself but not sure what part it is I need to replace.

It will boot back up eventually and I enabled ADB Debugging, and pulled the logs from the TV to see if I could figure out what's causing it. I ran the logs through AI and it found a few things which I will paste below. Just being upfront this is AI analysis.

The actual fault signature, which is why I think I'm in the right place to ask: load average pegged at around 39 while the CPU is otherwise about 80 percent idle. That's not CPU load, it's roughly 38 kernel threads stuck in uninterruptible D-state, and the named set is the giveaway:

• [SonyBECtrlSpi] D <- SPI bus thread to the "Backend Control" subsystem
• [SonyBECtrlError] D <- backend error-handler thread - itself wedged
• [SelfDiagHandle] D <- the self-diagnostic thread that drives the blink code
• [MLVdo_thread] D <- main video pipeline
• [SonySOPQCtrlVdo] D <- Sony picture-quality (SOPQ) control
• [SonySOPQCtrlUpd] D
• [SonySOPQCtrlSys] D
• [FRC Unmute] D <- frame-rate conversion (MEMC)
• [NR main loop] D
• [DI Film Adaptiv] D
• [AudHDMIParser1/2/3] D
• [Hdcp22Thread1/2] D
• [VsyncThread] D <- graphics composer vsync

What I'm hoping for from anyone who's worked on the VH2 chassis:

1. What does Sony call the panel-management / sub-MCU board in the service manual? The kernel driver names it "BE / Backend Control"; I'm trying to map that to the actual board designation for parts ordering (G board? PA board? part of the main?).
2. Have you seen this signature (display works, backend-control SPI hung, intermittent 8-blink, dead wired ethernet alongside it) actually resolved by replacing the T-Con, the panel-management board, or only by a panel swap? Want to triage cheapest-likely first before authorizing.
3. Anyone know the IR sequence to enter service mode on a VH2 / A90J so I can read the actual blink-code error history? Sony's com.sony.dtv.system.crashlog@1.0 service has the data; it lives in /data/vendor/sony/... which non-root ADB can't touch on a user build, so service mode looks like the only path.
4. Encompass shows parts here: https://sony.encompass.com/model/SONXR83A90J - if you've ordered the BE-side board for an A90J, what part number was it?

Happy to share the raw bugreport, dropbox, thread dumps, and Scalar API dump with anyone who wants to verify, I have about 30 MB of captures archived. Sony support has been unhelpful which is why I'm here. Thanks.

We finally got our interview scheduled and approaching the end of this long, long journey.

OFC Biometrics - June 9th
Medical Exam - June 23rd
Interview - July 7th

So I am living here in the Philippines with my Fiancee and our 3 month old while we've been waiting out this K1 process. I just found out about this OFC seminar thing, that has to be done after the Visa is on hand. Having been in the Philippines long enough I know how complicated literally everything can be. So from what I've heard, FBI/Police clearance of the petitioner is not a required document, but it can be asked for during the seminar? And it's at the discretion of that person.

The problem: I can't get FBI clearance here in the Philippines, nor can I obtain local police clearance from my home state. I believe that needs fingerprinting etc. I don't have any criminal history at all, so what can I do to prepare?

Flying to the states to get this is not really an option, I can't leave her and my son. If our relationship is presented solid enough, is it really needed? I am 35, she is 31.

Secondary question:

For the interview at the embassy in Manila, we have her NBI clearance, but it's not "AKA". She doesn't have any other names on legal documents, never been married, and as far as I know NBI won't give AKA NBI clearance documents if she has never had a correction or name change. Are we okay with the regular NBI if all names match on our documents? The embassy states it should be AKA but that's not always applicable.

As the title states, last night I had a problem where Claude Code was using my extra usage credits without stating it. Then suddenly I get a message "your org is out of extra usage for the month".

I checked my usage window and all was within usage limits. Though it wouldn't let me send any messages. I checked the usage dashboard and that too was fine, checked the Web, and phone app, nothing showed I hit any limits other than my extra usage spent $40.

I logged out of the desktop app, logged back in and the message went away, and I could use it as normal.

Then I used my phone for something and it said I only had 5 messages left...so I logged out and back in and the message went away.

Fast forward to now, I got the same problem, but since it already burned through my entire $40 extra usage limit yesterday, now I just get out of extra usage. But yet, I have not hit my usage limit for any of the brackets. Claude keeps wanting to burn through my extra usage instead of using my plan limits.

I am on the $100 MAX plan and this is crazy to me. The first time I brushed it off, despite the loss. But a second time? Something is wrong.

I opened a support ticket but wanted to post here to see if this was a common issue lately.

https://preview.redd.it/65evl64hodyg1.png?width=849&format=png&auto=webp&s=95e76ff1f789e9b9df29521efab1267b685772cd