Canovision A1 Hi8 camera repair?
 

Hi,

Not sure where to place this post on the forum, but here goes..

I have this dear old Canon A1 Hi8 (PAL) which I bought brand new when they first came out in Australia. It circumvented the world I don't don't how many times and gave me some excellent vision and memories. I still have maybe 100 tapes which I want to digitize. Commercially at $60 a tape I have no option but to do this myself, if I live long enough :-)

Maybe this old dear can help me out again as it has transferring to my PC, many tapes before.

A year or so ago I took my dear old friend out of it's case but found that the tape door would not open. The LED went on but nothing would open the door and nothing spins inside it.

I took it to a camera repairer here in Sydney and he said it was a board and he couldn't find a replacement anywhere. I sadly put it back its case and moved on with my modern HD and 4K stuff.

Now I find myself pulled to it again and since finding this fabulous forum thought maybe there is an angel or two here who could assist in helping me find out how/where to revive the dear old thing. Maybe there is a lonely board floating around out there.

Appreciate any thoughts, except to throw it away. :-)

Many thanks and have a safe day in this weird world we are in today.

oz

There are far better cameras with internal line TBC that you should be using anyway.
See http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...-digital8.html

Is this the Canon A1 Digital from about 1990? with tape load on the back rather than the side?

If so, at least the NTSC version included internal DSP for both record and playback, including 14.3 mHz sampling and full field memory for both Y and C. This would effectively perform a TBC functions for the tape being played; however, it was an "always on" function, not switched. (It also supported stereo sound recording and had a 1/2" CCD.)

Did the shop tell you which board is bad?

Might not apply to your case, however, my recollection is that the A1, L1, and L2 all used a similar tape transport mechanism that included slide switch in the mechanism that informed the electronics of the state/position of the transport, and if that switch became intermittent (e.g., dirty or corroded contacts) it might not allow the tape compartment to open or loading/unloading. (It happened to one of my camcorders in the 1990s.)

Also, I believer the unit may suffer from aging capacitors that impacted the EVF for sure, possibly other boards as well. (I no longer have my A1Digital.)

I see parts-only units offered for sale on ebay. That might provide a source for a board.

Surface mounted capacitors, I have a similar camcorder at home loaded with them I think the L2. It was the 90's catastrophy. There was a flawed batch that affected almost every electronic device back then that needs miniaturization and used that batch, Sony and Canon used them primarily on their camcorders (Pro and consumer), Philips used them on their DCC decks for the read heads.

Unless you feel confident of taking it a part and take every board out that has SMD caps, remove them, clean the damage caused by the leak and repair traces if necessary and put on new SMD caps and put everything back together. If not just trash it and get another camcorder, It's not even worth repairing because it world cost you twice or three times more than if you buy another used working camcorder.

Many thanks for your help guys. Looks like a funeral service for my dear old friend :-(

I will check out the costs on the lists provided.

FWIW: I just powered up my old Canon L2 Hi8 camcorder (mfgr. date 1993). It shares a number of boards with the A1 Digital, and has sat unused for 15+ years.

While the camera head appears to work with some minor issues, the tape playback looks very much like classic SMD capacitor issues. Also, the internal date system will not set to any year more recent than 2013.

I would say that while it was an excellent machine in its day, it would be a high risk buy today due to the apparent capacitor issues. If considering one, test it out first. Same warning applies to the A1 Digital and L1 models.

If I can find time I may open it to check the boards and confirm the capacitor issue.