Sony MVC Floopy Camera

[Photo-John]

Mike-
I'm not sure what to say about this. If removing the battery and using a new disc doesn't fix the problem, I'd toss the cameras. The image quality of those floppy disc Mavicas is so poor and they're so huge that I'd say it's best to do the world a favor and put them to rest. I certainly don't think it's worth the money or effort of fixing them. I hope that doesn't seem to insensitive to you. But you can can get far, far better digital cameras now for under $100. Time to let those suckers go.

[SmartWombat]

The image quality of those floppy disc Mavicas is so poor and they're so huge that I'd say it's best to do the world a favor and put them to rest.

People actually like the images I've taken with mine, and a friend has an 18x20 enlargement of one of my photos hanging on his wall !
--- rant over

Remember this is just a computer with a camera attached. So ordinary floppy disk drive cleaners ought to work. After years of use the heads will get covered with accumulated oxide from the disks, and it might be the cause.

I don't understand the attachment to floppies, I would far rather have one CD than a three foot pile of floppies. Which is why I took all my Mavica images and put them onto CD years ago. That way I can make multiple CDs and have backups far easier than copying floppies.

I am a pack-rat and I probably have the original box for mine, and the manual that came with it somewhere - but google the model number of your camera to see if there is an online manual.

If it makes a regular tick, tick, tick as the disk spins, then it's definitely a drive problem. Because it's a floppy it should be simple and easy to replace. But check carefully inside, I had to remove a ripped off disk sticky label from mine, and from then on never used labels on the disks.


Here are some googled answers...

http://www.avrepair.com/mavica/
http://www.pechorin.com/m/2003/07/12...OR-202719.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SonyMa.../3969?source=1

"Get a Floppy Cleaning disk (a new one not a used one) and run a cleaning cycle on the drive in the camera. If that fails, try blowing it out with canned air and cleaning it again."



"looks like it must be a disk alignment problem. On mine, I found a little sticker that had fallen off a disk and was stuck in the very back of the drive. Took some patience to remove it, but once gone (and with a computer reformatted disk) the problem was solved. Look carefully for any foreign matter."

"use only 1.44 diskettes
- 10th May 2004 12:08
720 Diskettes have the problem only use diskettes formatted 1.44 No = DSDD Yes = DSHD"

"Guess what. After I submitted the cry for help, I move the camera around some more and heard something moving inside. I held open the disk opening and shook the camera. Some small piece of foreign material came out and now it is working fine. Don't know when messing with it if I had knocked it loose."

"I got given an FD71 cos it didnt work. I tried everything everyone said and no success HOWEVER when i took the camera apart including the disk drive i found that one of the read/write heads had become dislodgedf and had been forced down behind the pivot for the moving read/write head arm. I carefully dragged the little head back up and re-glued it in place making sure the ribbon cable was pulled tight and was sat in its little trough which travels up the moving arm. The head is mounted on a little metal plate which the cable runs off the back. When levering the arm open be careful not to let it slip cos it spring loaded when it closes it could crack the head as they are very delicate so be careful! I put the camera back together and i still got the error but the i could actually see the shooting image on the screen as apposed to before where it was just black. I took it apart except the drive with both the batteries out and left it on my desk for a week cos i was annoyed i couldnt get it to work. I just put it together and it works! woo hoo. It still gets the odd error when viewing the images on the camera but hell at least it works! be careful when removing the long black plastic drive door because somewhere there is a tiny spring which holds it shut and if you loose this then the door will not put the required pressure on the diskette and the drive will not believe it is there. The door pushes the disk down onto little sensors which tell the camera the disk is present and wether it is write protected. I had to wrap a rubber band around the back of the door and the end of the drive to pull the door shut! hope this helps"

"Hi, when this problem started I sorted it out by using a cleaning diskette, just once, without any cleaning liquid, it worked fine for several months, after that, the problem continued, and so I started to use the isopropilic alcohol, some drops in the cleaning diskette, worked for some more months, but now, it is not working at all, I bought a new cleaning diskette but it is not working at all, it seems to be an unusual quality problem of a genuine Sony equipment"

"The drive is a Mitsumi d353g. It is available on Zeehoo.com for $2.00 (Yes Two) The shipping was 8 bucks and they accept paypal. I don't know if this is the same drive on all of the cameras, but I think it is compatible nonetheless. I have an old MVC-FD5. They are for sale elsewhere as well, but for much more"

This one is, I think, PJ under another name
"FD92- I had some problems with disc errors/protetc. I find doing a full-format on the PC, then inserting the disc into the camera before turning it on usually does the trick. If that doesn\'t work try standing on your head and chant "Ohm" whilst open and closing your legs. Then throw the camera in the nearest river."