Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave A
It's alive! Andy Cuffe has had the Mavica for a while and it is back. He replaced by my count 64 surface caps. The camera is alive in it's 1988 analog glory. It does have a pixel problem across the screen on one row. The pixel count is .28megapixels and looks like that. But there is no other working version of this Sony recalled camera that I can find. 1988 introduced and recalled shortly after. The next Sony Mavica cam was 1996.
I have a few photos of the ballpark but I have to move them to a DVD via the only analog output of this cam and then screen cap them via that DVD from VLC to show them here. Andy moved forward on my battery solution to the camera battery and it is working for multiple photos. Stay tuned.
No wonder this thing died and Sony wanted it killed.
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If you can post pictures of your battery, I'll be able to tell you if it can be re-celled or not. The main concern is if it leaked or not, and how easy it will be to crack open without actually cracking it beyond reassembly. Among other things in my youthful past, I was the "technical guru" (on-site engineer/expert, un-licensed, un-regulated, un-censored, and probably un-hinged!) for a local specialty shop that did batteries and things directly related to batteries. (We did flashlights too, but they were rechargeable! Streamlight.) Re-building cordless drill batteries paid for at least one car and half a house by my count, not to mention what they paid me out of the profits. Originally we shipped the re-builds out to a company in Florida, then I came along doing odd-jobs and working miracles, and basically said to the owner "You know, this isn't rocket science, if we can find somebody to sell us the benchtop spot-welder I'm pretty sure we can pay it off in 90 days. We know what the cells cost, we know what XXXXX in Florida is charging us for the assembly, and we'll save shipping both ways." Turns out the guys in Florida were actually more than happy to sell us our very own spot-welder and all the other bits and bobs we needed. (Oh god the heat-shrink, it was GLORIOUS!) It wasn't any skin off their nose because we still bought nearly all of our cells through them anyway, and once in a while we'd still send them some particularly difficult or fiddly rebuilds. The shop I worked in closed up after a crazy flood in 2006, plus when Li-Ion went into "everything" starting around 2003/2004 it kind of put a pinch on the rebuilding end of things. Mainly because
just
not going to touch a multi-cell Li-Ion pack that someone else is going to use. Too much potential liability in those days. Now with protected cells it might actually be profitable, but we live in a disposable economy with planned obsolescence built in and by the time a battery needs rebuilt the device it goes into is obsolete/broken or can be replaced for $10.88 at walton-world.
The spot-welder is still operational, he's got it set up in his workshop and does odd-jobs and repeat business as an on-the-side deal, and the parts supply is still pretty deep as of last year. I'd be willing to rebuild it for you if you'd like. (With modern cells you can expect about 80% more capacity than original. You could go higher (up to 250% more!) but to do so requires some chin-scratching and napkin-math to make sure the charger will actually handle it properly.)
I just realized that if ETF ever gets their rebuild-operation going, the same spot-welding hardware could see use for gun assembly/re-assembly once that supply finally dries up.
I'll have to do some digging, I also may have a sealed box or two of the required 2" floppy diskettes, but as memory serves they were the Panasonic format, not the Sony ones. (Zenith luggable laptops had Panasonic drives in them.)