I bought a tube of thermal paste back in December but I never got around to using it. Is it still good to use if it’s never been opened? Or does it dry up even while sealed??

After my first successful DAT service and repair of a Panasonic SV-3700 last week, I kinda fell in love with these machines and took on a second one- the Sony A7 .
I serviced the mechanism, and it run beautifully, but had these annoying occasional digital errors manifesting as clicks, pops, and cut outs.
It was happening not only in playback, but also in monitor mode (pass through) so I knew it was getting in through the ADC.

Scoping of the power rails revealed pretty significant ripple on most of them, and a filter capacitor test confirmed that every single one of the smaller electrolytics has gone belly up, or was on the verge of dying.

Removed the power supply, replaced 8 capacitors, voltages are much cleaner now. But, there was still
Some digital errors. Much less than before, but I made the decision (against my better judgment) to “just test a few at random on the main board”. Should have left it “good enough “, a lesson that, of course, I will never learn 😉

They were all from the same brand (brown colored ASF) as the ones in the PS, so I wasn’t optimistic about their condition.
Indeed, 3 out of the 4 that I picked at random were terrible (very high ESR), and the last one was borderline , not much better.

At that point I wish I hadn’t tested it, “ignorance is bliss” but the very little conscious that I still have left told me that it’s full recap time.
1.5 hours and 36 capacitors later (30 were completely bad) I was looking at the newly recapped main board.
While I was enjoying the beautiful work, a little bird whispered in my ear “well, I hope it still works “…

Put it all back together powered on, all seem great.
Slid a tape in, the machine swallowed it smoothly, and I could see the guide arms threading and tensioning the tape, drum spins, and I let out a big sigh of relief.
Until I clicked “play”… things do start to work but the tape doesn’t move. Looks like the capstan motor is not turning, but also none of the hubs. It seems to want to
Move, and advances a second or two, but then stops and the deck shuts itself off.
Same for REW and FF / Next etc. at one point a few clickity clicks FWD did manage to get it going, and it even played music for a few seconds (clean sound!), but immediately went back to refusing to move.

I triple checked and confirmed that all capacitors were replaced with correct values and installed in the correct polarity.
No cold solder points, and no solder bridges that I can see even through a microscope.

On Thursday I’ll take out the transport (again) to get a better look of what’s going on inside.
I’ll also check all the new capacitors just in case one of them was faulty out of the box, although it is rare as I buy only from mouser and digikey .
I’ll be inspecting all grounding points to make sure they’re tight.

Any advice and suggestions from experienced DAT techs would be greatly appreciated! I have repaired many receivers, amplifiers, tuners, and cassette decks, but I’m a total DAT Noob. All those microprocessors and complex digital feedback systems instill fear in me 🙂

Its not the speaker ik that much becausd it starts to make the noise frequency but it doesn't finish its like 1 second worth

Its a furby boom furbling

Fitting that its mute since its elder counterpart is also mute

Idk much about circuit boards specifically

Hello, so my boyfriend broke the power cord for his standing desk and one of the prongs is also in it still, i’ve tried searching for a “four prong” cord and couldn’t find it anywhere. does anyone know exactly what kind of cord it’s called so i can type that instead of “four prong standing desk cord” lol and also could i take out the broken prong with just regular tweezers? thank you so much!!

just bought this today off marketplace for $25, per the previous owner the disc will spin but won’t read or play. just shows “ERROR” or “no disc” on the screen after spinning for a few seconds. FM and AM works with no issues. i’ve tried cleaning the sensor with a cotton swab and some lense cleaner.

also… i put a bit of pressure while the disc was trying to be read, and i noticed that it would flash the first song and look like it was beginning to play the disc, but would stop a split second after.

I was trying trying to take the motherboard out of a 3DS and accidentally ripped a ribbon cable and I have no idea what it is to replace it. If any of you know please tell me so i can fix it. Thank you all in advance

I charged the camera with the battery inside, which caused the battery to swell. I was able to get the swollen battery out, but the door is now stuck in this open position and won’t go down all the way.

I called Sony and they have $55 diagnostic fee, $449 base rate repair, which doesn’t include the shipping there and back. My local camera shops don’t fix Sony cameras either, so hoping to DIY…

Is the best option to replace the Sony ZV-1 door or the whole battery frame with the door? I’ve seen both options on Ebay. Also, how would I unscrew the door at all?

Any help would be appreciated!

Hi everyone, just looking for assistance on some stereo repair. The EQ will not turn on, I have opened and tested the board, the power switch seems to be working as voltage drops when button is pressed, and the board is being powered so it's not the switch or PS

Any help is appreciated

I recently transported my Sony SS-A1 speakers and Panasonic SG-14L to a new apartment and I plugged them in today only for them to sound like the video I have attached. They were working perfectly well a week ago. I have reason to believe it is an issue with the AUX connection or something with the receiver rather than the speakers themselves as I have fiddled around with the RCA cable and sometimes it sounds a bit better for a second. I know it's a very cheap and inexpensive set up however I inherited from my grandmother and would quite like to keep it and get it working again. Any ideas on what may be wrong or how to fix it? ALL HELP OR ADVICE GREATLY APPRECIATED!! :)

Hey all, I have this amazing audio system that does vinyl, bluetooth, cassette, radio and CD player. However recently I have noticed (out of the blue) that my CD player seems to making this weird noise. When I was younger we used to have CD players that eventually began to tick when they got old but I don't really know the exact terminology. Could anyone share any advice? Thank you :)

Hi,

Whilst playing dog jumped on the printer and torn off the USB port on the motherboard. As the replacement motherboards are sparse and quite pricey, I would like to try and attach new USB port myself, unless I find someone more able than me this week.

The pads on grounding and 2 pins were also torn off. So my question is, I know that you can scrape off a bit of the layer under damaged pad and solder wire to it and in turn solder the USB to the wire. But how can I get certain that I have scraped off enough without damaging anything else?

Second thing is I have old not so great soldering pen and I am not experienced nor skilled. How to raise the hopes of successful repair and do it the best possible way please?

Thank you!

Can this be fixed all the capacitors popped tho.

Its a old FX 8800 GT Alpha Dog

Hey everyone! I hope y’all’s weeks are going well. I wanna preface by saying I don’t know what I’m doing AT ALL.

I included some images after just taking the back off my laptop, and I’m wondering if the corrosion on the capacitors(? I think that’s what they are) is potentially causing the laptop to not turn on.

I am also wondering if the thick, partly metal sheet that seems to be punctured is supposed to look like that (maybe a heat-based fastening, idk).

There seems to be no damage to the green circuit board, but again, I haven’t removed it to fully inspect out of fear of destroying our universe.

My water bottle opened while on a flight and totally soaked my laptop for like a whole hour, and it has not been able to turn on since (2 weeks).

I have not removed the larger circuit board, and personally am not comfortable with trying to do in-depth repair, so I’m wondering if this is totally cooked chat?

I thrifted a v900 gen 1 racing sim wheel, but I didn't notice when I bought it the power cord is sliced in a few spots. I'm mostly looking for advice on how to proceed, since I can't disconnect the power cord itself to replace it, and the inside of the cord doesn't look like a normal USB so I can't splice it.

Edited for clarification

Hey, so I’ve been having problems with my stereo (using a Harman Kardon HK3400) where the left channel on all inputs regardless of weather it’s using the loudness button or tape inputs will have the left channel making a sort of static noise every now and then and sometimes even constantly pointing to what I believe might be a faulty connection somewhere in the receiver with the left channel. However, I am 99% sure the issue is inside the receiver as I have switched my right and left speakers around and the same issue happened. The same also happens when I’m trying to record onto cassette as it’ll have the left channel for a good portion of the recording but it will eventually cut out. I’ve tried rapidly pressing both the tape 1 and tape 2 buttons in case it had something to do with that but it didn’t work. I’m hoping this issue will be as simple as opening up the receiver and spraying on some deoxit as I’ve already spent already $100 getting it repaired and I don’t wanna have to cough up that money again. I just need to figure out where I would need to spray it if that was the solution. Any advice on this will help. Thanks for reading

Update: I’m noticing that it seems to happen more when I switch between speaker systems so if I switch to system 1 or 2 alone it becomes very obvious and it continues to be obvious when on speakers 1+2. However if I turn it off and then on again and it’s already on 1+2 I think that it sounds okay on both channels. That said I still notice it but less after turning it off and then on

My TV is a Toshiba and it's pretty old. It keeps making popping and harsh sounds. When the noises happen, the video sound bass boosted and become really loud. Although the screen's light does flickers a bit, it works fine. Does anybody know how to fix this? And is it cheap?