In the early 1990s, I bought this Ricoh R-830 Video Camera Recorder, and the salesperson said that it was actually made by Sony, but with a different (and better) lens.
It's had such little use that it's not easy to tell it from new by looking at it.
I'm hoping someone can cross-reference to the closest Sony number for me, or tell me how I can find this out.
I'd like to tear into this thing and find out why it's not working, and would feel better if I had a Sony number to hang on it.
When pressed, a couple of years ago, the folks at Ricoh simply say, "We don't sell video cameras." End of story. I couldn't even get them to admit that they had ever sold them.
Could you give us any more info? What are the symptoms of the camera's problem? What are the physical characteristics of the camera? Pics? The thing that comes to mind immediately is fish caps. Sonys of this era had a problem with fish caps. Does the camera smell like fish oil? Do you have an ESR meter? Have you worked with SMD caps? Replacement caps can be had from Mouser on pages 515-518 of their catalog. They are made by Nichicon. If this is the case it will depend on how long the problem has been going on. The fluid inside the cap can leak and over time completely eat through the traces on the circuit board making repair very difficult. Removing the caps can be difficult so as not to damage the traces. Alternately there are fuses on the back of the main power board (depending on the model) that can blow out. They look like resistors. Richard
Two years ago, symptoms were intermittent color/black & white, and same for sound.
Yesterday, symptoms were some pathetic motor sounds when first turned on; viewfinder lights up, then shuts off, and whole unit refuses to do anything else.
This thing got used about 3 hours-worth when I first bought it, and none since. It looks like it's never been out of the box. Well... it *did* until this morning, when I couldn't resist the urge to take it apart!
I don't think I've yet done any damage to anything, and I've found three capacitors that are leaking varying amounts of brown ooze.
I've been looking thru my Digikey catalog, and got stopped by my ignorance about capacitors. The leaky ones are all the same: aluminum (?) cans with a sky-blue shrink-covering, stamped with: "10v" "220 [symbol for micro-farad]" and "sxj". On the next line: "03(3)" and "M(85[degree symbol]C)".
From reading the last couple of days, I get the impression that the "85 degree" marking indicates the temperature range for dependability, and is somewhat of a quality rating, where higher temp equates to higher quality. But by no means sure of this.
There are many other silver-colored cans on the various boards in this unit that are surface-mounted, and if they are capacitors as well, they'd really have to leak a lot before I'd be able to see the ooze coming out from under them.
Even tho I have serious doubts about ever get this thing back to snuff again, I'd sure be willing to spend a few bucks for capacitors, if I just knew which to get, if only to rise to the challenge.
Any further help would be very much appreciated, both by me, and the electronics industry suppliers!
Hmm the Nichicons are rated -55-105=BAC. Did Digikey have any Nichicons?
Well to test them in place you'd need a ESR meter like here:
formatting link
and that's a kit. I once did some testing with a homemade one but now have Dick's and I'll never go back.
Well given what you've already found there's probably a lot more that aren't leaking or not so much that it's easily noticed. Then there's the problem of desoldering them from the board and resoldering the new ones. It will be a challenge. Richard
As I recall, Ricoh and Sony shared many camcorder models back then, and that many camcorders suffered from leaky caps, but the folks over at sci.electronics.repair could probably be more help to you than anyone here.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.