Saisho Portable Cassette Player Repair:
I got given this Saisho BBFX12 portable cassette player to look at as it was not doing anything, the cassette door is loose and there is a rattle of something loose inside:
The owner had tried to get it running with 2xAA size Rechargeable batteries which was the first mistake as rechargeable AA batteries operate at 1.2v whereas regular AA batteries run at 1.5v and this needs the whole 3v to work.
With new regular 1.5V AA batteries inserted I can hear some grinding but nothing is actually happening… So of course we open it up:
Peeking under the PCB I can see the drive belt has dropped off:
and the rattling is caused by a loose spring that I am assuming is for the front door:
This blue wire that is attached to the positive battery terminal is stopping us looking inside:
So we de-solder it and flip the PCB out of the way to the side or at least that is what I should have done had I noticed this was possible until after I had de-soldered the wires to remove it, but hey hindsight eh?
Unfortunately the belt fell totally while doing this so I didn’t quite know how it should sit…
After some trial and error figured out the correct way to put the belt back on:
So much easier to work on when all the wires were re-soldered back in place and only the one blue wire is de-soldered to allow the PCB to be flipped to the side:
Anyway… now that is sorted I needed to figure out how to put the spring back in place.
I notice their is a hole in the door cover and try to put the spring into it:
Then find a small pin hole in the case where I guess it should attach to:
Which means I need to flip the spring around and yes that is it:
The cassette door now springs closed and open correctly again!
I now re-assemble it and let’s try the demo tape I got given:
Good!
When I contacted the owner he could no believe that I had managed to get it working again and thought it would just end up being thrown away. So much so that he decided to just let me keep it for my effort made in repairing it!
And with that I have FINALLY made it to 50 repair logs!
This one was a bit off topic for the boards but I have a bunch of other logs to put up all retro game related in the near future.