Camcorder Transport Repair
- Symptom: No power up on AC or battery, no battery charge.
- Initial disassembly revealed no obvious problems. Traced power
from DC in jack and found two blown SMD fuses on main board.
Removed faulty fuses and temporarily bypassed them. With fuses
bypassed, camera would power up but transport jammed during
load/unload.
- Disassembly of transport (see below) revealed mangled slider
assembly as well as other bent parts (suspect forcible tape removal
and/or dropped unit).
- Re-bent slider assembly back to original shape.
Realigned tape guides.
- Tape alignment across the head drum is critical because
of helical path. Researched MiniDV format to discover that audio and
video are stored on different portions of each "stripe" across the tape,
therefore alignment can be set by examining playback of known good tape for
either audio dropout or video glitches. (Output of heads can also be
examined on oscilloscope.)
- Constructed LANC-laptop interface to read and clear
diagnostic codes from unit.
- Camcorder is now fully functional.
