Info from kickinchicken before they went belly up.
Original author unknown.
Resetting the channel maps in the Primestar receiver.
1) To clear all the Primestar channel mappings you must perform a factory
reset of the Primestar receiver. To perform a factory reset, on the remote
control press <MENU>, then select the option for "Set or Change
Password". When the password prompt appears, enter "996" and then press
the <BUY> button. This will take you to the "Distributor
Installation"
menu. One of the options at the bottom is to set or restore "Factory
Defaults". Position the cursor over that option, then hit the <BUY>
button again. After 1 or 2 seconds, the receiver will say "DONE" on the
screen next to that option.
2) There is another secret menu. Press <menu> then 8 (password menu).
Once there press 114 then the <buy> key to get the "Setup" menu.
3) Tuning the correct frequency
Go to the "Setup" menu (114-BUY) and look at the channel map (after
you've performed a factory reset). Find something in the channel map
that is as close to the desired frequency as possible.
If you cannot find something in the channel mapping that directly
corresponds to the desired frequency, you have to use the "LNB offset" in
the "Distributor Installation" menu (996-BUY) to compensate; e.g., if you
want to look at 1190.0MHz, but can only find 1189.0 MHz in the channel
mapping, set the LNB offset to -1 Mhz, and that should fix it. The green
signal LED should light up when you tune to channels with a DC1 feed.
4) Signal Strength
Use the Primestar remote to press <MENU>, and then "7" for Receiver Status.
There will be a line on that screen that shows the "Signal Strength"
and it can very from 0 to 139, with "0" being a perfect signal and
"139" meaning "no signal". (Yes, it's backwards.)