On 24 Jan 2006 07:04:11 -0800, "spudnuty"
wrote:


tbl wrote:
In the early 1990s, I bought this Ricoh R-830 Video Camera
Recorder, and the salesperson said that it was actually made
by Sony, but with a different (and better) lens.
I'd like to tear into this thing and find out why it's not
working, and would feel better if I had a Sony number to
hang on it.
So, anybody able to cross-reference?


Could you give us any more info? What are the symptoms of the camera's
problem? What are the physical characteristics of the camera? Pics?
The thing that comes to mind immediately is fish caps. Sonys of this
era had a problem with fish caps. Does the camera smell like fish oil?
Do you have an ESR meter? Have you worked with SMD caps? Replacement
caps can be had from Mouser on pages 515-518 of their catalog. They are
made by Nichicon. If this is the case it will depend on how long the
problem has been going on. The fluid inside the cap can leak and over
time completely eat through the traces on the circuit board making
repair very difficult. Removing the caps can be difficult so as not to
damage the traces.
Alternately there are fuses on the back of the main power board
(depending on the model) that can blow out. They look like resistors.


Well... since you were kind enough to ask... ;-)

Two years ago, symptoms were intermittent color/black &
white, and same for sound.

Yesterday, symptoms were some pathetic motor sounds when
first turned on; viewfinder lights up, then shuts off, and
whole unit refuses to do anything else.

This thing got used about 3 hours-worth when I first bought
it, and none since. It looks like it's never been out of
the box. Well... it *did* until this morning, when I
couldn't resist the urge to take it apart!

I don't think I've yet done any damage to anything, and I've
found three capacitors that are leaking varying amounts of
brown ooze.

I've been looking thru my Digikey catalog, and got stopped
by my ignorance about capacitors. The leaky ones are all
the same: aluminum (?) cans with a sky-blue shrink-covering,
stamped with: "10v" "220 [symbol for micro-farad]" and
"sxj". On the next line: "03(3)" and "M(85[degree
symbol]C)".

From reading the last couple of days, I get the impression
that the "85 degree" marking indicates the temperature range
for dependability, and is somewhat of a quality rating,
where higher temp equates to higher quality. But by no
means sure of this.

There are many other silver-colored cans on the various
boards in this unit that are surface-mounted, and if they
are capacitors as well, they'd really have to leak a lot
before I'd be able to see the ooze coming out from under
them.

Even tho I have serious doubts about ever get this thing
back to snuff again, I'd sure be willing to spend a few
bucks for capacitors, if I just knew which to get, if only
to rise to the challenge.

Any further help would be very much appreciated, both by me,
and the electronics industry suppliers!

--
Thanks to all
--
tbl