On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:54:28 -0400, micky wrote:
BTW, if I were a fully equipped panasonic camera shop, or maybe any
electronic camera shop, I would have extension cables. The manual has
part numbers for them. A set of 5 lets all the parts sit several inches
from the other parts, so one can fiddle, then check if the camera works
without the time it takes to reassemble the camera.

I remember doing that with an LV-ROM player (like a CD-ROM, but using
Laserdiscs, something of a rare beast) - there were about 20 separate
PCBs in the machine, and it was impossible to work on it and test without
extension cables.

Looked around. Everything looked good except I found that there is
another battery soldered in place (in addition to the rectangular
battery one removes and charges in the charger) . It has white crystals
underneath it, just a little but I know it's too much, and it measures
25 millivolts instead of 3 volts!

It's definitely a battery? Mention of it being tied to the shutter
mechanism just made me wonder if it was a discharge capacitor for the
flash rather than a battery at all.

So, I need a battery again. Last time it was for a laptop, and I was
able to remove a coin battery holder from a very old computer mobo, or
maybe I bought one at radio shack after that, and run a wire to outside
the laptop, but I don't want to do that for a cute very little camera,
with no already-existing holes. And I'm not sure I can get this battery
at all, in any physical size.

Well, if it is a battery, do you know if it's a rechargeable or not? If
it's not, then as a quick test I'd desolder it I think, run wires to the
outside world, then loosely reassemble the camera - hook the wires up to
a couple of 1.5V batteries and see if the camera works. If it still
doesn't work then you've got other faults to find and can work on them
(or give up! :-) without having spent any money.

cheers

Jules