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[dhouston]

What does that zero crossing signal have?
...
Do you suspect a bad or badly soldered R38 or D10? 

The ZC signal is just the powerline 60Hz massaged into a squarewave. It is needed to sync the PLC signal to ZC. (See explanations of X10 PLC signals.)

I do not suspect any specific component - it's just that ZC is needed to trigger the PLC signal so it's a logical starting point for troubleshooting. Otherwise, you might suspect the PIC if there's no PLC output when the lack of a ZC trigger is the real culprit.

[Steevo]

Brian, that RR501 is much newer than mine.  Everything I have, I have had for years and years.  Heh.
I have been hacking a long time.

I gotta take mine apart. I will scope that zero crossing signal first.

[Brian H]

The one I am using is an Date Code 02F23 and matches the schematic you linked to.
It is the one I found the 18 volt zener gets very warm and the board was turning dark. Solder also looked poor. I replaced it with two 9 volt zeners diodes in series and changed the main power supply capacitor. Repairing those parts corrected it flakiness.

The newer one is a spare and I bought it when X10 was showing early signs of supply problems. I got it from a independent X10 dealer when the prices where still cut throat.

[Steevo]

I took the RR501 apart, and it sure appears to be the one in the schematic.  

Date code says 6J40, not sure what that means.  40th week, I imagine.  6J might be 2006?  Nah, that sounds too new.

I haven't done anything to it yet except examination.

One thing I did notice that seems interesting is the antenna is not connected to the board at all.
It seems to be inductively coupled, which seems odd for a receiver. 
Part of their UL, I guess. 

[Brian H]

Yes the antenna is capacitively coupled for isolation.
TM751 is the same.
Both have the incoming Line Power for their common on the PCB.

6J40 is more like 1996 or 1986.
The two digit years started in 2000. Like 06J40 would be 40th week of 2006.
I have some real old BSR X10-HD243s with a 2J42 on them.  

[dhouston]

One thing I did notice that seems interesting is the antenna is not connected to the board at all.
It seems to be inductively coupled, which seems odd for a receiver. 

As Brian noted, it's capacitively (and very poorly) coupled. As I warned earlier, the electronics are not isolated from the mains, necessitating galvanic isolation for the antenna. See...

• http://davehouston.org/ImproveRR501.htm