I have the same problem with one of my Sony surround receivers. How
the problem occured is a educated guess by me. Here is how I think I
fried the final amp, or something close to it.

I put my surround speakers on A and then some floor standing monsters
on B. I usually use them all for stero music listening, and the las
ttime I used them I was listening to music. I left them all turned
on, both A + B. Next mistake was to have the speaker impedence switch
in 4 ohms, then to amplify the problem to the next level, I put a
surround movie in the DVd the other night. Sound kicked on for a few
seconds, then silence and the smell of smoke. Then Protector flahed
on the receiver screen.

Troubleshooting done so far yielded the fact that I can stop the
protector from kicking on if I pull the power supply leads off of the
final amp board. I can leave every other connector in place, and the
receiver starts up normal, execpt for the one major detail of No
sound.

Next I used my Fluke 87 to check the final transistors while in
circuit in a very rude way. None of them appeared to be shorted, so
all i know now is that I can run the receiver as long as i do not
connect the power supply leads to the final power amplifier board.

I do not think the smell came from that board, and I could not feel
any warm, or hot components with the power on and protector flashing.

The fact that the receiver is somewhat smart and can protect itself,
makes me wonder why the darn thing fried. My guess is that it didn't
have a complete short to react to, but a very low impedence that
caused a part to fry before the protector could stop it, then the
protector saw the fault after it caused a companent to fail, making it
obvious.

I would love a schematic for the DE-835, and a cross for the Sony
parts so I don't have to get them from Sony.

Please respond to my Hotmail, and use Sony in the subject so ican
sort it out from the tons of SPAM that goes there.

Thanks to all that read this and supply a useful comment. Joe

try?

This protection is designed to detect a short in a speaker output.
Disconnect all speakers and see if the problem goes away.

If speakers and cables are OK, it may be indicating an internal fault.