Hello. Straight in with a technical query. Hope that's not too frowned upon here: I have a WM-FX493 that I bought new in about 2000. It served me well for quite a few years, but then I didn't need to make use of it, so it got packed away. It's not in terrible condition, and I still have the remote for it, which is handy. However, I stupidly left a pair of rechargeable batteries in it. They of course went dead due to the slight constant draw from the electronics keeping the screen active on this model. Thankfully they didn't leak, but they did cause some corrosion on the battery terminals. I've had the unit apart and cleaned that up. With a pair of new batteries in it, there's volts at the PCB terminals. And it came to life too. Screen works, you can turn the radio on, set the menu items etc. However, when you press play to start a cassette, it very slightly and briefly dims the screen (as if there is a load being applied somewhere), then the screen very quickly flashes "hold", and it doesn't actually do anything. It's not the hold switch, as if you move that to "hold", it flashes hold on the screen the 4 times it's supposed to. Switch hold back off, and you can again attempt to start the cassette, but it does the same again (screen slightly dims, hold briefly flashes up, then nothing more). My first thought was that it could be a seized drive motor. I've not yet investigated this, but wanted to see if anyone had experience of this. I understand the mechanism is shared not only with the near-identical FX491 and FX494, but also with another model (FX479 perhaps?) There are a few other FX491 and FX493 models on ebay at the moment, so I could get another and use it for spares, or make one good one from two, but if there's a easyish fix for the one I have, I'd love to get it going. Subnote: I notice looking at the FX491 that the only difference appears to be that it doesn't advertise on the front as being "remote control", however it appears to have the socket adjacent to the headphone port for the remote control cable. I wonder if it is in fact compatible with the remote cable, they just sold it as a slightly cheaper model and didn't bundle a remote with it. Any and all assistance is most appreciated. David.
