I've hunted all over and find decades old information on this being a typical problem for this unit, but cannot find the parts & instructions on how to fix it.
I Have The Tools
Anyone familiar with this situation on these units, so I can get mine working again, please?
In the interim I bought their PCM-M1 in mint condition to get going again, but it'd be really nice to get my old tried & true TCD-D8 running again as it's in pristine condition other than this failure to load.
If its like the D3 or D10 then no rubber bands to perish, direct motor drives. First suspect would be the cassette detect switch bent or corroded. If motor tries to work then perhaps its failure of the multi-poles of the motor, they are so close together they jump and "fuse" , whatever the terminology is. End result is loss of poles and loss of torque or failure to turn more than part of a turn
ok, this is way fun, actually, for old-times "WHAM THE TV AND IT'LL WORK" days refreshment.
IT WORKED!
The unit successfully loads the DAT cartridge afte 5 "Distinct Opening & Closing of the Loader Door. Then WHAMMING IT PERFECTLY PARALLEL with the desktop three times... et VIOLA!
SHE WORKS!
Oh No
That isn't the problem after all.
The cartridges now load okay, but Play does not do anything but... LOAD {flashing}
0H00M00S shows and the LOAD process is over.
The one person suggested pressing Record Then Pause to do something or other, so let's try that, eh.
UnLoad Tape slam the gizmo one more time for effect Load Tape Hit Rewind LOAD flashes then the unit stops as it is at the beginning of the tape. Press FF and it tries for a few seconds then stops at the same set of zeros. Press & Hold FF and it does the same thing. Press Record and it says TAPE PROTECT, oopsy UnLoad Tape {there's no label on this tape so it is probably FRANK ZAPPA LIVE AT THE KINGDOME OR SOMETHING REALLY IMPORTANT TODAY!} un-latch write-protect on DAT tape thingy put it back in and it says LOAD for a second then all zeros as that's where it was last time or something Press Record nothing happens Oh, Wait, Press Play to begin THE ARMED RECORDING thingy er, uh, no it's press Record & Play at The Same Time, oopsy AH HA moment WRITE shows up for a second or two then the tape transport STOPS and we are still at all zeros tape time.
Thanks, Gareth, it appears it's some sort of cam wear on this thing in the loading mechanism which causes grief. Sitting for over a decade certainly couldn't cause this wear, though, is what I am hoping...
It was working 111% when last used and put away carefully.
for a really long time.
I am surprised it powers-on at all, actually, much less this replacement PCM-M1 which is plowing through the 33 DAT cartridges I never got around to mulling over to the Archive drives.
The CORE cable I bought that does 7-pin Sont DAT communications hooked to a single grounded line to one specific pin out to a RCA plug coaxial S-P/DIF connector into the M-Audio M-Track Plus input of similar ilk, though the signal level mismatch does not appear to be any problem whatsoever as CORE explains on its site.
YAY
all these ambient tapes with occasina Harley-Davidson engine noises AND the crows.
That's pretty much it on these archive tapes.
What a joy to spend another thousand dollars on what would probably cost $20/tape to get transcribed.
But Now I Have The Equipment To GO RETRO again still...
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