Hi, I just bought off ebay an AIWA HS-PX287 for a few euro. It is "new", never been used and it appears in good shape. The belt is also in good shape and it seems able to properly drive the tape transport.

The problem: when i fisrt predded play, the tape played correctly for ~30 seconds and than the AIWA started jumping from one direction to the other and then it stopped. FF and REW work fine, they're a bit slow but you cannot expect high speed in a walkman powered by a single AA battery. But if I press play, it just starts playing for less than a second, switches to other direction and then stops. At first I thought it might be the optical sensor, but FF and RWD uses the same sensor to detect when to stop and they work. Can it be a mechanical problem, or it might be an IC problem ? Has anyone ever encountered a similar problem ?

thanks

Enrico