dskeeles
Joined: Jul 30, 2003
Posts: 25
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I remember some posts asking about repairing an MCA-20, and the general reply was "try prising it apart, if you have nothing to lose".
Anyway, I tried exactly that, and thought I'd feed back my experiences. It's only a few words - I managed to get the thing open, and tried to repair the problem (a sticking electrical contact), but ultimately failed.
Basically, if you prise off the light blue (?) fascias on the front and rear, held by the usual plastic clips, you'll find a couple of small screws holding the two halves of the casing together. Unscrew these first, and opening the casing will be a lot easier 
Opening the casing is the usual affair of sliding something slim and not too sharp around the edges, popping the plastic clips, until the two halves come apart. Once inside, you have a simple small circuit board with camera, and a thin ribbon cable to the connector socket.
If you want to pull apart the connector, be extremely delicate - the contacts themselves are the tips of a 'flat-spring' - basically a thin ribbon of copper stamped/shaped in a zig-zag, that slide through slots in the main connector body. If the edge of these snags inside the slot, then pulling too hard (more than 20g??) will start to stretch and distort the shape. Once they're stretched or misaligned, they're going to be prone to snagging, and chances are they will be too fiddly to repair. I tried 4 times, but couldn't give the spring a clean enough shape to slide freely in the slot. Eventually I had to chuck the camera.
Hope this helps (either in repairing, or in not bothering wasting the time to try!)
Cheers,
Damian
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Posted: 2004-02-29 21:16
