jim.hoggarth

Hi all. I have been asked by a customer where he could get a new LIP-3WM battery for his Sony MZ-N10. I of course replied: "just look on eBay, you will find what you are looking for". Nope. And I have googled world-wide for LIP-3 and Sony N10 battery, and absolutely nothing like a sales link comes up. Has anyone any idea what has happened to these batteries? Surely they have not disappear off the market totally? Jim, perplexed. oops! That will teach me to work late into the morning. The battery is the LIP-3WMB. That brings them up now, but why did LIP-3WM not fin them as a substring? Think I need to go to bed....

Morning all. Thanks for PM, gerchy, I missed this thread yesterday. First off, I have no experience with this model. But doesn't mean we can't diagnose the problem. Having listened intently to the video, I believe the initial power-on clicking to be a relays energising. Having briefly looked at the service manual I see one relay pulls in to apply mains power to the primary transformer (standy circuits run off their own minor transformer), and a second click after the first will be the audio mute relay switching (this prevents power-on 'pops' being sent to the external power amplifier). But that burst of clicks just as the 'No Disc' message comes up sounds more mechanical to me, more like a plastic gear 'graunching' (that is one of my more technical expressions). Does the clicking occur if a disc is already loaded into the mechanism? I notice from the service manual that the disc load tray is, as you would expect, loaded/ejected by a rack and gear assembly. I am wondering whether a fault in one of the LSI chips is causing a short pulse to the loading motor when already at its extreme. Or perhaps a switch that detects the tray being fully loaded has 'expired'. Jim

Oh rats! That's one less goal in life I can achieve. So how do we mortals refer to the learned one now, Oh Master! ;-)

Hi all. As Stephen will testify, I am gradually working my way into Hi-MD units, which require a few more disciplines and tools than the 'basic' MD80 units. It is going quite well, and my stock of parts is building up, although it's an expensive process as these machines command high prices even when total non-workers. I don't recognise the non-functioning buttons problem on the unit, although I have come across the wake up by remote 'feature' which seems to be when the unit is in total power-down mode, rather than the situation where the unit has been used only recently and wakes up on the first remote key press. The battery charging problem could one of several things, including voltages, although that would contradict Stephen's Malaysia theory as the NH1 was made in Japan. You are welcome to post it off to me for inspection, in which case PM me for my postal address. Jim

One thing I forgot to add. I have now looked at several machines from the N510/N710 family, and they all appear to suffer the same low voltage problem, and by the same degree of scale. This not only adds credence to Stephen's theory about the Malay factories, but also allows us to generalise. It should be possible to describe the adjustments required without reference to a voltmeter, certainly for the models on which we have concentrated. I have found, so far, that all the voltages are low. Only the two charge current settings are dead accurate, although they will probably wander if the charging voltages are changed. This is a good things as most folk who would have had access to a Digital Voltmeter undoubtedly would not have had the two 0.5% tolerance resistors required! The current settings are not critical anyway, I feel. Any slight changes should only marginally change the required charging time. Upon advisement from the Guru Stephen, I may make available a list of Service Mode procedures to up the voltages on the N510/N520/NF610/N710/NF810 models. This would also benefit us, assuming we get useful feedback on the validity of this problem and the fix. Jim

That is an interesting idea, although I feel the playing on battery only gave time for the charging circuitry to do its magic and you are reporting a coincidental happening. I will, however, investigate the possibility when I next have a candidate battery and machine, prior to adjusting the voltage settings. I do worry that the problems with charging we are reporting are leading to a hefty number of perfectly good batteries going in the trash. Anecdotally, prior to the voltage adjustment revelation, I have to agree that the R90/R91 was a superb battery charger. Although regarding this machine as a watershed may not be a total truth, as I have found the R55 model to be extremely finicky about batteries. As yet I have not had a chance to experiment with the really early (ie all metal) machines. The charging circuitry relies on a quite sophisticated and dedicated chip. There's no timing involved, nor temperature sensing. It is done purely by dV/dt, ie changes in voltage across the battery terminals. When NiCD and NiMH batteries are fully charged, the voltage developed across the battery drops ever so slightly, literally by millivolts in the case of NiMH. It is this that turns off charging. This part works fine. It's getting the buggers to start charging that's the problem! I actually find that difficult to believe. I have seen many hundreds of these batteries, and never one that has so much plastic wrap stacked up on the top that the battery terminal will fail to make contact. You are writing about the positive terminal, are you? The one with the metal cap, not the flat end that forms part of the battery body? Perhaps the actual problem is that the battery contact is bent flat, or even backward on itself and pushed into the supporting plate, a condition I have seen several times. I would be grateful if you could confirm this by looking again at the battery contact, or even sending me a PM with a close-up photograph. Jim

Yes, sure. It's not ideal of course, but for the standard MDs alignment completes successfully.

There is a good chance that simply running the CD and MO auto-adjust routines is enough to get a working machine. As I said before, the standard MD machines can be very forgiving. Have you tried shopping on eBay for a premastered CD minidisc? The UK site ebay.co.uk is awash with minidiscs at the moment. There is a resurgence of interest in MD titles, some of which can go expensive, but there are always the naff ones coming up that you can buy for next to nothing as nobody is really interested, especially if it is just the disc without a case and inserts. You only need it to run the MO auto-adjust routine anyway. Examples are The Spice Girls or Billie Piper. Just find one starting at 99p and ask the seller if they will ship abroad (I am assuming you are not in the UK). It may not be as expensive to post as you think. The Royal Mail's postal charges are a total farce anyway. Posting a mains adapter to Sweden this afternoon cost me GBP 1.34. That is several hundreds of miles by aeroplane. If I had posted it to Leeds, which is about 6 miles away, it would have cost GBP 1.47. Go figure. They adjusted their packet prices once eBay started getting popular over here (or perhaps I am just getting cynical in my old age)! Jim

I must admit, I checked the DVM against the voltage readout on the PSU, after it became apparent the first few readings were all low, even though I was forewarned by your comments. Both exactly to 3.00 volts. Now that was a surprise! My next experiment will be with OWH voltages, to see if the power to the write head is low on some of the units I have already diagnosed as having a faulty optical assy, or those which just don't see to want to be fixed (specifically, giving a 138NG error on MO discs, as if the OWH is open circuit, which of course it isn't). Jim

One more thought - when you place the NF810 into the cradle (with the battery inside, of course), wait for at least 30 seconds before thinking the battery will not charge. I have been doing some experimenting today, with an N710 showing charging problems (same basic electronics as the NF810), and when a totally flat battery was first tried the recorder made that odd little motor noise it does sometimes when you place it in the cradle, then sat there drawing a heavy current load for several seconds (about 650mA). Then the current dropped, it gave the same motor noise, and then pushed 650mA through the battery again. And, several seconds later, the current dropped to zero and *then* the battery started charging as normal. And for you, Stephen: I can confirm your findings. This machine was not charging three out of six batteries. I did the voltage adjustment routine and found every setting was low. Only by a few or 10's of millivolts, say a 1.25v reading was 1.22v, but after adjustment to the absolute values given in the SM every battery worked fine (after the odd high-current cycles described above). Am I right in thinking you actually set these values higher, both on VCHG hi and lo and VREC hi and lo? Jim

Hi again. If, as you have already stated, you only tried charging the Pisen battery in the GP charger once, you must persevere and try several times, discharging the battery each time, until you can safely say there is something wrong. I have known some Sony models reject batteries that have not been conditioned, but happily accept them once they are in a healthy state (this may or may not be connected to Stephen's findings on voltage, I don't know as I haven;t yet experimented with these). Please persist with the external charger first. And you *must* make sure that the battery contacts on the NF810 are in good condition with no corrosion at all. Normally the contacts deep inside do not need checking, as leakage only comes from the positive end which is where the battery flap contact is. However, if you have had a bad battery leak at some time, liquid can run down the battery and collect inside at the other end. But this is very rare. I have only seen it a couple of times. Personally, I wouldn't start messing with the adjustments unless you are already experienced at electronics, with the more experience the better. If you are a total novice and have never stripped or serviced an item of electronic equipment of this complexity before, you may totally wreck the recorder. Jim

The ECM-DS70P is one of the mot widely faked microphones around. Be very careful, as the counterfeit models are absolute rubbish. I wouldn't recommend it for recording a concert anyway. The R90 can be susceptible to noisy motors, and the design of the DS70P ensures that any vibration is transmitted straight to the microphone capsules. You may end up very disappointed. The ECM-CS10 I don't really know very well, but I have some experience with the CZ10, which is a similar beast with an add-on phase tube, but is only mono. Not the best of mics, but then the similarity may only be in name not quality. The 719 I know nothing of at all. I believe the most highly respected mid-range microphones are the ECM-907 and ECM-957. But they are not very discreet, should that be necessary for your recording session! Jim

What you have succeeded in doing is overriding the process flags so the firmware just thinks the adjustment have successfully been made. (the ASSY part shows something like OO or 11 initially to indicate no adjustments made, and FF when all adjustments successful. Going straight back into service mode when the battery is reconnected indicates that the firmware knows not all adjustments have been made yet). In reality you have reset all the machine's settings to the default and bypassed at least some of the adjustments: that includes temperature and electrical offsets, voltages, focus adjustments, etc etc. That said, my suspicion is that many of these machines came out of the factory in that state anyway, and the design of the standard (ie non-HiMD) machines is very forgiving in this respect. If you suffer any odd problems, such as protracted delays when seeking from track to track, or odd drop-outs in playback, you should really perform a full recalibration and adjustment. But then you will need a digital voltmeter, a laser power meter, a thermometer, a lab grade power supply and the test discs to do a *proper* job. Best not to reset the NVRAM at all! Jim

The battery can get hot some times, although this not a good sign as heat is one of the wost enemies of a rechargeable battery. Crystals mainly form due to shallow discharge cycles, with nickel cadmium batteries being the worst affected. This brings about the so-called 'memory effect', and is the reason why we were always told to fully discharge NiCd batteries before recharging. Of course NiMH does not suffer the same way, but over time the same crystal build up will occur. The best way to condition a battery is to do a deep discharge, followed by a slow recharge, and again for several cycles. This reduces the crystal size and breathes new life into the battery, unless the cells are so far gone nothing will bring them back. But, some battery powered equipment will not perform a deep discharge as there is a trade-off between battery capacity and life. That's why your mobile (cell phone) may only last a few days before cutting off, even though in truth there is still some 'juice' left in the battery. Deep discharges ultimately reduce the cycle life, so a typical rechargeable with a 100% depth of discharge may only give 500 cycles before being chemically spent. But, perversely, the best way of revitalising a 'constipated' battery is to perform a few deep cycles. I have taken a seemingly useless battery, which only gave a five minute charge initially, and after a few slow-and-deep cycles got it back to at least 85% of 'as new' capacity. But, the important point is the depth of discharge. I have found the best way is a 10 ohm medium power resistor shorting out the two terminals. This gives a reasonably slow discharge current of around 120mA, and by virtue of being a constant low resistance will utterly flatten the battery. When followed by a relatively slow charge (I use a Sony E510 as my charger, attached to a PSU with a current read out), after around six cycles the battery is either back up and running or obviously will never make the grade. I perform this with every battery that comes into the workshop, and I doubt more than 5% have to be discarded. However, I have no idea how long this revitalisation actually works. But I have yet to have any customer complain that their battery only lasted a week or so, which makes me believe I am doing something right. Incidentally, watching the current being drawn by the machine performing a charge is quite education. It is easy to assume it simply pumps a constant charge into the battery. But no, the current varies considerably, at least initially, as the electronics takes measurements and 'tastes' the battery, as it were. Only after some time does the battery get the full 500mA 'poke' that most minidisc chargers can provide. Jim

Hi there. Does your GP charger state the charging current? And does it have an LED which indicates still charging / charged up? If so, time how long the charge cycle lasts and post the info and we can tell you if the battery is being charged up to its full capacity. If not, it could be a duff battery or a duff charger. Another possibility is that the Pisen battery has not been fully conditioned before leaving the factory. How many times have you attempted to charge and discharge the battery? New batteries, or batteries which have not been used for some time, will only take a partial charge the first time, sometimes as low as 20%, and each on successive charge/discharge cycle the capacity gets better. In my experience it can take up to five full charge/discharge cycles before full performance can be obtained. Jim

I have had time to investigate the problem I had with the N710s further. I was testing these using my bench PSU, set to 3.00 volts. When I came across the problem again, I upped the PSU output to 3.05 volts and all problems disappeared. And that was over several examples of N710, so it looks like a generic voltage adjustment problem on that model. Jim

For the most part, Sony MD units that take the gumstick batteries have the same design of positive battery terminal. Irrespective of how the actual electrical contact is arranged, the major part is a metal plate stamped and shaped with two 'fingers': The finger at the far end of the plate has the end bent down, into a 'hockey stick' shape. This protruding 'peg' is designed to prevent the metal part sliding all the way out of the plastic battery compartment lid, by catching against a moulded 'bumper' on the plastic flap. To remove the battery flap this finger needs to be gently lifted with a tool such as a small screwdriver to allow the peg over the bumper, which will then slide off. If the battery lid keeps falling off, it is this metal finger that needs to be bent very slightly downwards, so that it catches against the plastic bumper again when the metal part is replaced into the plastic. The inner most metal finger, which tapers, also bends downwards, with a hooked end. This part is designed to ride up over a further moulded part on the plastic, in this case an upwardly sloping 'hill'. It is this part that gives the flap some 'friction' when the door is closed, thus holding the door firmly shut. If the battery flap opens too easily, and you find the battery falling out on its own, this finger again needs to be bent further downwards to apply more pressure on the 'hill' when fully closed. Of course, if the terminal hinge is broken, or the contacts heavily corroded, replacement is really the only solution. Jim

Hi Aaron Sorry, missed this thread completely and email notification of your original question never came through. I have now replied by PM. Briefly, however, the problem will be adjustment. It is feasible that a fault on the (replacement) laser unit is causing CD vs MO discs to fail, but the consensus seems to be that the drive unit is not adjusted correctly. And I agree with Stephen's warning about head and/or lens cleaners. If you look after your discs, such as always storing them in their protective dust jackets, and limiting the times you use discs other than brand new ones you have personally opened, you should never get contamination from the discs (this affects the magnetic write head, the only part that comes in contacts with the disc surface). Airborne pollutants can cause film build-up on the optics, such as cooking deposits and smoke from cigarettes. But as I recently discovered, cleaning the lens will probably make little overall difference, as the same deposits will also build up on the laser block end window and the beam bending prism unit. These parts cannot be easily reached, and for most optical pickup assemblies I would refrain from attempting to clean these in case the OP was terminally damaged. Jim

Hi Aaron. R900s can develop a number of unique problems, and you may have come across one of them. Generally, faults of this nature on this chassis are caused by the sled motor or the optical pickup. Both of these can produce similar faults, so it's not easy to say which may be at fault immediately without looking at the machine and running a few tests. But the R900, and to a lesser extent the R700, G750 etc, do have a specific problem that causes many weird faults, some just as you describe. The sled motor has a capstan mounted gear, which drives a secondary transmission gear. This is made of white plastic. Over time, it can distort like an umbrella turning inside-out, so that the gear teeth lift above the gear on the capstan, causing slippage. In extreme cases it is accompanied by a loud noise as the gear teeth clash. This may be all that is wrong, and is a part I change regularly on these models. As for the button problem. I am tempted to say it is just bad switch contacts, and indeed it probably is, although it is rare you find so many switches all misbehaving. The switches are configured to select different resistance values, depending on which key is pressed. Dirty (aka 'ohmic') contacts can present incorrect resistances to the microprocessor ADC inputs and be interpreted as a different key press. If the problem affects all buttons at the same time, it is more likely to be a logic/ADC fault on the main board, however. Jim

Hi. Are you in the UK? If so, shouldn't be a problem whatsoever. The majority of cars sold in the UK in the last N years have ISO connectors. With a standard adaptor cable, which you may already have behind your CA790X in place, the Sony connects straight to the two ISO blocks. These adaptors can be had for just a few Pounds on eBay. One of these ISO blocks is for the four speaker channels which should already be mounted in your new car's dash, doors, back shelf etc. If you get into any difficulty just give me a shout as I have the required pin-out data and colour codes, etc. I actually have a Sony Bluetooth CD/Radio player in my Citreon (I would have an MD unit but this was a pressie from the Missus). Whenever I want to test an auto MD deck (in-situ rather than on the bench) I just pull my CD player out, plug the MD player in, and it works fine every time. Your only problem me be pulling out the factory made CD unit and then finding a suitable way of mounting the metal frame (forget now what this is called) and sourcing a suitably shaped plastic trim to finish off the overall appearance. Some in-car units have fronts made to fit the contours of the car's central plastic console, not the standard letter-box shape of an ISO sized CD player. Personally, when I saw the price of a 'proper' bit of trim, I did not bother and simply pushed on the rectangular trim supplied with the player, leaving a slight gap between player and car's plastics. Didn't look too bad as the finish of the console continued under the front of the original Citroen radio cassette. Jim

Interestingly, I have just opened an RH710 I have had in stock for several months (years?) which I had not looked at yet. I can quite plainly see the write head bent back through 180 degrees, as discussed. I can also see that the lid lock lever is in its locked position, and there are subtle marks around the edge of the lid where an implement such as a knife has been used to pry it open and presumably retrieve a disc. The machine itself is dead. I assume it failed during record, the owner could not open by the eject button, so took a tool to open it. Shame that they tried to ram another disc in after it, as now it has two faults not just one! Jim

Hi Ian. If you are still looking for these items, send me a PM as I can supply most MD parts. Jim

Interesting comment. I recently purchased one single Pisen brand battery for evaluation, although not from this particular seller it was through eBay and from Hong Kong: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270564954670&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSA:GB:1123 I was not expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised. The quoted capacity was 1350mAh. I tested the battery out over several charge/discharge cycles to 1380mAh. I also did a full charge and left the battery for several days prior to discharging, to evaluate retention. Again, pleasantly surprised as the battery still came out at 1350mAh. I used the same MZ-E510 to charge this battery on each succesive cycle, so I have just taken it out to test again on several other units. So far an R900, N710, R55 and RH10 have all happily accepted the battery and have started charging fine. Although it would obviously take a while to see if every unit charged the battery to the same maximum capacity. Perhaps you got a duff batch? Or, ironically, are the batteries you purchased not 'genuine' Pisen but fakes? If Sony have finally clamped down on the widespread faking of their NH-14WM batteries, perhaps the forgers have turned their attention to another manufacturer. Of course it also possible that the Pisen quality control is so bad, a batch of useless batteries can easily get through their QC department. Jim

Yes, Stephen, you are right. NH10WM, but of course they are 900/950mAh capacity - go figure. I have found my self getting quite confused today, so I'll blame it on tiredness and too much sugar. But the N710's genuinely choked on this battery, which otherwise performed flawlessly in an R55, an E510 etc. I must try this again soon, to see if the problem can be reproduced. And thanks for the free publicity. The bottle of whisky is in the post! Jim

Peter An interesting sequence of events. Every case of this fault in my experience is caused by a busted overwrite head. Busted, as in physically broken, ripped off, or bent. Now I have always attributed this to damage caused when the disc is inserted or removed, perhaps inserted incorrectly, or forced out with an 'implement' because the eject motor has stalled, or perhaps caused by a bent disc shutter catching the head on the way in/out, or the incorrect use of a head cleaning disc.. But, here's the thing: you reckoned that tracks were laid down as they could be subsequently replayed, but the TOC was not written just prior to ejecting (hence the blank disc). Which leads me to believe the OWH was functioning perfectly while the disc was already in, and failed with that disc still in the drive. Hence, not attributable to physical damage. So the only conclusions I can come to is that the head is NOT damaged as is normally the case, but is probably one of these: i) the write head cable failing and going open circuit, perhaps when at the home track where the TOC is written (I have never known this to happen yet - the write head is not the same design as in the portables) ii) the write head coil has burned out due to a fault in the driver transistors iii) a piece of 'crud' has come adrift from the disc and stuck to the underside of the write head. iv) it's all a government conspiracy In all cases, it's worth opening the machine up just to have a look. If the overwrite head is physically busted it may be obvious to you. If you are careful you may be able to clean the underside of the head with a Q-Tip soaked in methylated spirits. BUT BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO BEND THE HEAD UPWARDS OR LATERALLY. And if there's a radio bug in there, you know case iv applies. Jim PS - Stephen, on different subject, the NH700. At least 50% of the ones I have seen in the workshop have the overwrite head bent backwards by 180 degrees, obviously cause by catching on an inserted disc. In theory a disc can't be inserted when the OWH is loaded, ie down, as the lid lock lever is also in place (although I admit it is not very strong on the NH700). So in practice the battery must be re-inserted to release the lid lock, and lift the head back out of harms way. I am mystified as to how customers manage to ram discs in when the head is loaded, but it is obviously happening. Perhaps once I see more of these in for repair, I will ultimately find out what is going on. Oddly I have never seen the problem on the N10, N910, NH600 or NH900, which have the same basic chassis design.