ardvaark

I have Sony MZ710, MZS1 and MZG755 (terminally faulty). I began to notice that the AA NiMh batteries were becoming flat far quicker than I remembered several years ago when they were new. Either the batteries were losing their capacity or the MDs were increasing their consumption. Imagining the batteries to be the more likely cause I bought a power meter used for monitoring electric model cars/plane batteries (it contains 3 microprocessors and calculates current x time to display a milliamp-hour figure). This confirmed that the batteries old and new had similar capacities which were in the region of the rated value. The alternative explanation is that the consumption of the minidisc recorders is increasing. Has anyone noticed something similar? Are the motors brushless or brush type? If they are brush type then is there an accumulation of carbon dust? Is there some kind of regular service required to maintain low current consumption?