That should be easy to fix. Buy a reel of thin tinned copper wire and put pieces on the tracks anywhere there might be a break and solder at both ends. Back in the 1980s I bought an AM CB rig, one of many that South Wales Police thought they had decommissioned by smashing a hammer into the PCB until it was cracked into about four pieces. They then sent them to an Amateur Radio Rally for sale as parts only obviously thinking they would never work again. One afternoon I was feeling particularly bored so I got out my soldering iron and about 25 track repairs later had a working CB rig. I just skimmed through this and he seems to use the technique I just suggested. I would use a decent pair of snips rather than a razor blade which I would be worried about damaging the track or my fingers.
South Wales Police... I won't ask. I was born and raised in South Wales. The other side has these white traces and I'm not sure about these. Same procedure? - I've tried to strengthen the crack with super glue... it's in quite a mess. Must be about 40 breaks. I do have some kynar wire but it's nowhere near thick enough to use here.
@Michelle Knight your mishap had brought up some bittersweet memories from 2018-2019 when I was homeless and resided in a house that @Boodokhan in his infinite generosity let me move in I must have blocked that year from the memory, but here is a post from that time related to what you got yourself into: CONION Restoration +1 to what @Longman said: use single strands from multi-strand wire ((I have a bag of old power cords and old SCSI/Printer cables for the job)). First strengthen broken board loosely together with some tape and restore the traces. I make my life easy and do not always fix traces at the break-point but connect at parts being connected. Do not make my mistake here and do not just use solder at the breaks: always add a strand of wire! Once all done and working, use a GENEROUS amount of epoxy along all the breaks, maybe use two layers. Do not use 5-min epoxy, I am always too slow to fit within 5 min of such fun! It looks to me that white lines are just paint to show traces underneath, but please check first by scraping some off: its been a while since I fixed my last bbox. (I have a stash of them for when my house rebuild finally starts, to oversee the rebuild) SuperGlue and GooGone are two things I have to hide from myself: as with duct tape and a lot of cursing these were my first actions for when something like this happened. Unlike duct tape and cursing, SuperGlue never works
Thanks very much @Jorge and @Longman ... much to think about. I took a look at it last night, up late. I can't get the broken bits of board (three cracks) to fit back together properly. One of those hair lines goes quite far in to the board and I have to go a way before I encounter a good piece of track. The headphone jack is also a large one and is right on the corner of the whole thing... which is basically the part I caught in the first place. So any attempt to use that in future will just wreck the board all over again. Plus some of the tracks are right on the edge, which is where the board slides into the housing. A load of things stack up against this board... and that's before you even get to my inexperience. There was another unit on fleabay. No speakers even, but it does have the bonus of dolby B, and I record everything in B these days. So I've decided to buy that. On attempting to order more Nichion caps from RS components (which I actually did the other week so I had spares) the 33muf 6.3v was discontinued. I mean... discontinued?! ... and the 47muf 6.3V is also on back order. I got 5, which was enough to do the job, but the rest just keep getting pushed back. I'm starting to wonder how much longer some of these caps will be around. I'm already concerned about the Aiwa as there's loads of different little caps... just in the radio. I also haven't been able to locate replacement pinch roller or belt yet. And this is a National/Panasonic unit. It seems that if you don't know the specialist suppliers and people who are 3D printing cogs at home... then maintenance is going to be dodgy. So... I'm currently de-capping the board and getting ready for the "new" unit to arrive in about a weeks time. I'm gutted at my mistake... and it's cost me. But what doesn't kill you...
I think the white tracks are actual tracks. In the photo just above the blue switch I can also see a printed resistor. Both of these features will make repair more difficult. However, @Jorge 's post shows what can be done with time and patience. I recall that with the CB rig, which was a similarly big repair there was one track break, just at the edge of a solder joint that took ages to find. Once repaired, a box like the Conion should be as good as new. A repair that did defeat me was due to battery leakage in a valuable Casio keyboard. I kept cutting out tracks and substituting them with insulated wire, but each time I thought it was fixed a new fault would appear a few months later as the battery acid soaked further in the board. On the subject of capacitors the make isn't critical and you can always substitute a higher voltage e.g. A 47uF 10V or even 25V will work just as well as a 6.3V. The only thing to watch is that as the voltage goes up so does the case size so it is worth checking that a higher voltage part will still fit. p.s. The radio rally was in Barry. One of many I used regularly go to. Doing a Google search the same club did a "Tabletop Sale" in Feb 2020. Of course nothing like that has happened in the last year. A very sad list https://rsgb.org/main/news/rallies/
Panasonic RX-C45L board diagrams and shopping list - Main Board Corner of main board Eqaliser Shopping List
On the good side, I've finished the recap and assembled the RX-C45L. On the bad side... the internal 2A fuse blew before I got a peep out of it. But I confirmed it was working before I started the re-cap. I've ordered some replacement fuses, 20x5 T2A/250 ... and pray that the replacement doesn't blow immediately... because if it does... I haven't got a clue how to start troubleshooting this thing.
Double check for solder bridges (which can sometimes be very thin and hard to spot) and that every capacitor is the right way around. If you removed the heatsink from any power devices like the amplifier IC, did you fit back any insulators (which depending on the design may or may not be required) correctly.
Will do. It was quite a busier board compared to the RX-C45, so I'll do that tomorrow when I've "recovered" a little. I did double check all caps when I replaced them, and I think in a very few places the joints were actually connected to neighbouring pads. But there's a possibility that I have bridged somewhere and I'll go over the board again. There was a heat sink straight on top of the Sanyo chip. Just put new paste on. I'll remove that and make sure the paste didn't go over the lid and onto the legs... I did check with a torch after I fitted it and screwed it down, but I might have missed something there.... or it might be the age of the fuse. It was simply its time. But I've got some time on my hands before the new fuses get here, so there's no harm in going over it again.
The paste is non conductive so I wouldn't worry about that but make sure nothing metal is touching the heatsink (unless it is designed to). Do you have an illuminated magnifier ? I have quite a good desk one. A couple of weeks ago I saw some similar ones in Aldi for about £20
Yes, I have an illuminated magnifier. I also use a magnified headband... I can't read the caps otherwise It's fitted with 2x lenses. Fortunately, all the caps go in one of two directions, so it's easy to check them. But no actual caps went bang. However, there was also not a peep out of the system at all. So I'm hoping it's just the age of the fuse. But... we'll see.
I've found something else that's caused it to blow. Hooking up the tape deck causes a slight humming from the unit. If left powered on for five seconds, the fuse blows. It's something to do with the motor unit. More details and pictures when I can bring myself to do it.
I presume you should now have two tape decks. However, don't assume that they are interchagable although that is fairly likely. With regards to the humming, make sure that the tape deck is properly grounded. They might be relying on a mounting screw to ground it so if you are trying to run it sat on the bench you might be missing a ground conection.
FOUND IT !!!! - It was on the board at the back of the tape deck. I'm not sure how, but I damaged it (snapped an irrelevant corner off somehow) and fixed the broken track (purple arrow) however, that wasn't all there was to it. Yes, I did have another tape mechanism out of the other machine, but the connections for the tape head itself weren't the same. Also, the motor was 12V as opposed to this one being 15v. I did switch the back section (motor and mounting bracket) over and the fault persisted. So that lead me to the main board. However, doing some desperate messing around with a multi-metre I found a short between the grounding screw and SW10. I put some thin washers beneath the other two screws and lo and behold I can insert the deck into the unit and it all powers up and the radio runs just fine without blowing the fuse. ... this does leave me thinking that I've worked around a fault somewhere else, however, and I now have to run a tape through it when I'm feeling bold enough. - More to come... pardon the pun... stay "tuned" :-D
Video made shortly before the tape warbled and went to pieces. The new belts need looking at... but not today.
In case anyone was wondering, I'm still around. I've been working on building up more of a lab and gaining more experience before I turn back to the walkmans. I still have to finish the mess I made of this BBC Micro before moving on to a standard PC (a few twists, long story) and hopefully in a few more months I should be back on the walkmans I have. In the intervening months I've got a bench power supply, signal generator, oscilloscope and a de-soldering station. All entry level equipment, but it's a serious bonus to have them. I wish I had them, especially the de-solder station, when I did the Panasonic. Still, lessons learned. So... I'm still around, I just got diverted for a while. - Hope that everyone's doing OK, seasons greetings, etc.
Good to see your post Michelle. When you get the BBC Micro sorted you can add it to this thread. http://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/old-computers-prev-not-your-conventional-cassette-player.1581/ A few BBCs have been through my hands back when you could pick them up for £10 and sell them for £20. Be aware that,as made, the PSU contains the notorious RIFA capacitors. I recall an amusing occasion at the Ham Radio Club when one starting emitting large quantities of smoke while continuing to operate normally on the screen. Congratulations on the test equipment. You are lucky to have the room to have it all set up like that.
Many thanks. I'll add it to the thread when I've finished it. It's nearly done. It's the long suffering BBC B I had ten years ago and I've been learning on it. It has suffered badly at my hands. I have two others, along with a co pro. I'll add more when I have the details. If you know about the Stairway To Hell forum, now the StarDot forum, then there are people there who have forgotten more about the BBC than I'll ever know. So yes, the caps have been replaced on them all. Buying for a tenner and selling at twenty... those were the days. There is now a system which can take video output and translate properly to HDMI if you're interested. I built a few of them (10 minimum PCB order, so I built the lot!) and I have details here if it's of interest - http://msknight.com/bbc/rgbtohdmi.html - it will do more than just the BBC, although unfortunately no sound as the video takes up all of the Pi Zero's processing power. We have a three bedroom house. Mum has the largest room, I have my home office in the second and sleep in the smallest so, yes, I'm very lucky. Took quite a bit of planning, effort and measuring to get everything to have a place.
