For anyone interested in the song I featured in this episode, the link is in the description! TH-cam's UI changes seem to really be downplaying the role of video descriptions, which is frustrating -- I put lots of useful information and credits there!
Realy enjoyed the video ! But then I am a dcc fan as well . In fact dcc is what got me to your channel.Your right having a passionate community makes all the difference. Perhaps there will be a Minidisc museum one day .
9:58 Excellent song choice! Links into the narrative so well. I enjoy those touches in production, both to watch and create myself. Finding that right song really is a good feeling.
On behalf of the DCC Museum: Thank you so much for revisiting DCC! It's great that you now have a working recorder, and it's great to hear and see your high praise for this format. We've had some interesting developments in the DCC world lately and the improved read/write board for 1st generation recorders is one of the most important ones since the demise of the format. There's more to come!
Glad to be of service Colin. The DCC Museum is dedicated to keeping the format alive and we made you a promise in the previous video to help with your Philips DCC 900. It did take longer as expected, but we are all happy and proud with the result, but especially the way you visually told your DCC story.
It does not surprise me that people in the Netherlands were helpful to you. I lived in the Netherlands 2018 t/m 2020. It is such a great country. Take away most of the problems in the USA, and you get the Netherlands. I liked everything there except for the weather. After living there only two years, I now feel "homesick" for the Netherlands.
That transition at 10:10 from background to foreground audio was so expertly done that I thought for a while you had just put some generic background track over copyrighted music, and only noticed otherwise when the tape "glitched". As always, excellent production values and a compelling story well told. :)
I gotta say I have no real interest in this sort of equipment but I absolutely enjoy watching you give this old stuff the time and diligence it deserves. There's an honest intellectualism in all of your videos and they're just a pleasure to watch.
So glad you finally fixed the DCC player, because it’s such a rare audio equipment! I love that you’re putting a lot of effort into preserving these relics!
I remember seeing Phillips DCC at the BX at my first base. Thought it was a neat idea but couldn’t afford it’s price. Now seeing the issues with them as they age is another reason I prob never own one. It’s a great history piece of the format wars of the day. Glad you got yours working and how a community was so helpful. May you get many years out of your DCC
I am really glad that DCC Museum and the DCC Community is keeping the format alive by making new 3rd parts for the decks! I am now wanting to get into this format!
Even though many of your video pursuits do not end with successes, I really enjoy being part of the journey to try and restore old tech from my youth. I've been inspired to buy older tech on eBay and show it to my kids so they can experience how we lived before Smartphones and the Internet took over the world.
This past summer I purchased a Philips DCC 951 out of the same curiousity. Back in the day I was big into Minidiscs, but regarded DCC as a bad idea. I thought perhaps it was time to give it another chance. Thankfully, being a third generation, the 951 does not have your issue with the capacitors. Unfortunately, I still think it is terribly flawed. One thing that intrigued me about DCC is the ability to output standard Cassettes tapes over the digital outputs, it converts on the fly and works very well. Honestly, as a player of standard analog cassette tapes it is fairly outstanding; it sounds much, much better than my old Technics RS-TR272 which was a lower end deck when I bought it new in the mid 90s and is now in serious need of belt replacements. The engineering of the DCC 951 is really impressive in that respect. The problem is that after playing only 4 standard compact cassettes, the heads need cleaning and cannot even playback DCCs anymore. In fact, DCC experts such as those at the DCC museum, strongly suggest never playing compact cassettes on a DCC machine because of how sensitive the tape heads are to the ferric oxide that gets shed during normal use. That sharply limits how useful this deck is as I only own two pre-recorded DCC releases and have no intention of purchasing very expensive new old-stock cassettes and trying to record more. I may just use it to play old analog tapes and ignore DCC altogether instead of needing to constantly clean the heads. I would much rather use one of my NetMD portable minidisc recorders or the Minidisc deck in my hifi for recording, given that new minidiscs, which are still manufactured in Japan, are only a fraction of the price of DCCs and used ones are even cheaper. It is an interesting technology to be sure with very impressive engineering behind it, but it did not survive long enough for it to be improved or perfected the way minidisc was. In the end, my opinion from 1993 is unchanged as minidisc is definitely the superior format.
I have the DCC951 and I have played back analog tapes as well (can be used for digitzing via SPDIF/TOS out). No issue observed. DCC951 sound quality is really good, especially on prerecorded tapes.
Great video as always, Colin! A happy ending to a project thought to be dead in its tracks. To those curious, the song being played from the DCC is "Better Than This" by Dan Mason ダン·メイソン.
Hearing this unit finally play was almost emotional. So happy you got a working DCC!!!! These decks are just beautiful to look at. Nice job, Colin! Great video!
I find using a low temperature solder really helps to remove QFPs without overstressing them or damaging them - add some to all the pins, it mixes with the existing solder, lowering it's melting temperature and staying liquid longer, and then the chip can just be shaken off the board! Makes cleaning the pins much easier too :)
So glad to see you have a working unit again! I remember around 1993 they aired the first DCC music here on the radio. A 48 kHz instrumental track that was magic to my ears. That is my memory of DCC in the 90's.
The vibe on those videos is just so nice, it makes me feel nostlagic of an era where i'd follow my father in electronic shops, not understanding anything but enjoying seeing all kind of computer parts ^^ (and hoping that there would be video games)
Bravo, definitely sums up a journey many might not take. As much as I luv cassettes, MDs have always been my preferred “fabled” unicorns. Of which you’ve inspired ideas many times.👍🏾✌🏾✊🏾
I remember when I was at Virgin Music Store in Paris France in 1993, there was a dcc player that you could try yourself, I was very impressed and told my Dad about it, since it was Standard Cassette compatible! We never got one. But 1995 I bought me the MZ-1 from Sony for a ridiculous 1000 Swiss francs , because you didn't have to fast forward or rewind Minidiscs. 🙂 I still got all my Minidiscs, and two non working MDS-501, but the MZ-1 is long gone. 😕 Cheers from Magog-Canada
Glad to see you finally got a functional deck, really cool to see the deck in action! It’s unfortunate to see how scarce parts and units are since they weren’t that popular when new, but it’s really nice to see new replacement parts being made.
Must admit, I'm not familiar with this format at all really, so the fact you (with the support of the user community) were able to get your deck running, is all the more satisfying to watch.
Thank you for sharing! I remember seeing DCC advertised in the Radio Shack catalog, along with CD-i, but I do not remember seeing DCC in real life, as opposed to CD-i which had a demonstration unit set up in the store.
I sent my portable dcc player to the dcc musuem they do a great job. A seller sold me one that was supposed to be refurbished but it had a motor problem. I have the same panasonic you have in an earlier video the one with a glass door.
What a great video and enjoyable. Some people think that just a simple bubble wrap foil on it is a mega 0 in terms of protection. Multiple layers, absorbent material as a buffer between the items and the box is the only way.
Bravo! I love reproduction boards! If you EVER need solder work done Colin, let me know. I will do most things for free. You offer some great content and helping others means a lot to me.
Oh wow. Damaged in shipping? That legit hit me right in the feels. That's a shame. Love your persistence though. That's some real, inspiring stuff right there!
This is the same issue with the Sony GV-8 Video Walkman from 1988, the LCD back board had a bunch of caps in one corner which usually led to lots of damage. I do have 2 x fully working GV-8s but this was after buying around 15 of them.
I purchased the matching receiver and CD changer for this model of Philips back in the early 90's and still have them. They are connected up and work but I rarely use them. I remember wanting the DCC player as well but price and lack of ever seeing any mainstream music released on the format kept me from buying it.
“Cassette blocked” is a common error display . Fortunately my Phillips only does this on an intermittent basis. When it does, I use a butter knife to gently nudge the loading door open. Great sounding format and I still buy them.
I JUST watched the first part to this. And I was really hoping somebody would make a replacement board. So happy. Great work and thanks so much for the videos!
It's always good to know all the technologies that existed. Too bad that in my country I had never seen or seen any device with this technology, unless, importing. The cassette tapes that existed here were the traditional ones. Great video and thank you!😀
Happy to see your dcc up and running again. I have a second gen Technics RS-DC8 that needs repair and I have been procrastinating that for a long time now. I am sure I shall need to get an additional deck like you did and probably few more parts to make that possible. So far I managed to repair a few rare CD transports Technics made, few analogue decks and some rare Amps. My knowledge is limited so certain repairs i have to outsource to specialists that seam to be hard to find nowadays.
The RS-DC8 is possibly the hardest to restore. We have made a video about it with that same title lol. New gear, capacitors, belts at least. We are happy to help with services in Europe and N-America.
This was Simply Awesome to Watch and Made even myself feel a little more Confident about my own DCC Machine. I own a Marantz DD82 that I bought brand new in 1992 and although it’s still mint and the Cover has never been off ironically it’s still playing perfectly as well as recording with no issues. 30yrs of Not Really regular use yet still amazing it’s Playing like a trooper still. My only Thoughts now are do I Get the lid off and Give the Capacitors a once over🤔 Oh and the Original Remote Is also Working fine👍
If you still want to keep using your DCC, you really need to replace those caps! The trouble is that when the caps are on their way out, they will take the head with them! And those heads are even rarer than the read/write boards. The fact that it is still playing makes the recapping allmost 100% succes!
I found one of these decks a couple years ago for only $20 basically brand new, and it had the same issues these all did. I wanted to get into the format, but after doing the cap replacment to no avail, and finding out blank DCC tapes were $30 a piece, I sold it. I appreciate DCC as an interesting piece of history, and no shade towards anyone in the DCC community, but I think the whole format is a lost cause. Aside from being backwards compatible with cassettes, (which from my interactions with the DCC Museum isn't even recommended as it can "damage the heads,") the format has no advantage over something like minidisc or even the uncompressed yet now similarly priced DAT format, and I can see why it failed.
Hello Colin, it's Colin. I fixed my DCC900 with just new capacitors and cleaning up. Well, fixed in that it plays DCC tapes with no errors. It's not playing analogue ones, but I'll leave that. You've got to know when to stop, and it's not really wise to play too many analogue tapes on DCC decks anyway. It also required new pinch rollers from the DCC Museum (quite expensive though).
Yeah, I don’t think I really have any aspirations to play analog tapes in this deck - it sounds like that was a troublesome proposition even back when these were new.
Man it's good you got that deck in one piece. Im kind of tied off shopping companies using our packages as footballs or whatever they might be doing to them. I loved to collect G1 Transformers. And I found a G1 Trypticon (large walking dinosaur that transforms into a city) for a reasonable price. I asked for it to be sent with a signature required, hoping I would get a notice to pick it up at the post office because porch pirates are a thing around here. But the mailman left it on my doorstep on a rainy day, and the box looked like it was hit by a car from sitting on the road. I was fuming. It was full of water, I had to let it sit and drain in my bathtub! Luckily the seller packed it in a water tight bag with lots of sour pockets and the toy was undamaged. That was surprising since these have foil and paper stickers and that old plastic gets pretty brittle as see know.
I have arranged for all of my parcels delivered to the local post office (including those from Amazon). This prevents theft, weather damage, and most other issues. Some sellers will not ship to that address, so I just go elsewhere for my purchases; their loss.
DCC is my fave ill-fated format of all time.The story behind it, the form factor, the era, the unrealistic idealism for a digital format that still had to wound back and forth... Technology-wise and how far it had gotten, was admirable, but it was hopelessly doomed from the outset.
Colin, there is something about DCC that grabs my ear. It's like the old AKAI samplers. There's that old bit depth that seems to add to the sound . Nice video man.
Glad to hear that finally yr dcc900 is working now! Yahoo~ actually I was quite confused why Philips released dcc at that time, becoz I would like to pick DAT for the tape recording/playing in digital.
I had a similar issue with one of these decks, and finally got it working after changing the leaky capacitors and much repair work on the PCB. Albeit in my case that the service mode showed that one of the 9 heads was already dead, so the deck was running without any error correction capability from the remaining 8 heads, and very occasionally exhibited glitches from uncorrectable errors. I’m kind of surprised watching this that replacing the damaged board alone works as a fix. I’d always been under the impression that the head itself and the board were a matched pair, and that it was always necessary to replace both together. Sadly though, all my efforts eventually came to nothing because somehow in the final stage of my trying to tidy up the repair after MANY hours of work, a second of the 9 heads was lost, and it became game over at that point 😢
This was a super dope episode and that insanely awesome feeling of "completion" as you got this thing up and running cannot be overstated! I wonder, though, do you think a company like PCBWay could have gotten you hooked up with a replacement board? Like if you sent them the specs? Obviously it'd be a bare board, but I wonder if they could replicate the traces and layout if the options mentioned in this video ever become unavailable.
@@ThisDoesNotCompute Plus cloning it when so much work has gone into it would just not feel right, and you'd have to manually solder a bunch of components to it.
@@ThisDoesNotCompute What you're saying there makes perfect sense. I can't even pretend to know enough about PCBs and how they're set up to speak intelligently upon this. I just remember hearing about PCBWay and their services and didn't know if that'd be a viable option ❤
@@DaveAdams222 PCBWay is make PCBs from the data you send them i.e. Gerber files and NC Drill files. One would have to reverse engineer and design a copy PCB (something I do as a hobby when I'm bored of an evening). TBH those PCBs do not look multilayer, only double sided. Cheers, A
I have never seen in person, a dcc, or a player, but I do remember seeing an ad in Billboard with Cathy Dennis dcc. Interesting that a week after my cassette version crapped out in my tape deck, rubbing oxide onto read head and basically eliminating treble (which is how almost all tapes die), that this would pop up in my suggested viewing! Around the same time Digalog cassettes were appearing, iirc? That never caught on either, though it was good, and made tapes hiss free with Dolby b up to any volume I'd ever listen at!
When shipping you are best to have as little as possible touching the outer box then any impact on the side of the box will not be transferred to the contents. Just have the ends of the case resting on the box. Bubble wrap offers very little protection IMHO. If needed double box so the inner box doesn't get impact as much. I've shipped valuable vintage and modern synthesizers around the UK and to Europe with never any problems.
I dimly remember these around the same time as the minidisc, which I adopted. I think everything about these were more expensive, AND you had to wait for the tape to FF or REW. Minidisc: no Brainer. I saw a comment on here that says these are VERY sensitive to Ferrous Oxide from normal tapes, so you couldn't actually use them. I can't imagine how they thought this would take off. Philips MADE CD's a thing!
I owned one in the 90s. I can't explain it, but I always thought it sounded better than CD. BUT it suffered from one major problem. It was eating my cassette tapes. Since these were very expensive, I sold it and bought a mini disc deck. A good choice.
I read an article on a very old magazine ( I think it was very early 90s), someone in China got a drawer type tape player. I was very interested to seeing one, I know from other TH-camr and it might be Sony, which should match the time. But also happy to see there is another one ( might later than sony) who made similar design machine.
I guess I got lucky. Picked up a DCC951 in beautiful condition in a thrift store around the corner for a measly 30€..😃 Tested it with regular cassette, works perfectly. Now source a DCC and test that too..
I have a Pioneer commerical Amp which has a A/D board that uses to electrolytics and they too started going bad but they did very little damage to the board .
Hi, I´ve the same Problem at my DCC900. Analog cassettes play very good but digital cassettes have no sound. I found the Problem at the R/W-Board: R135 and R117! Mark the Position of them, than turn a few times left and right.After that back to the marked position and digital cassettes sounds again.There was some dirt at the Resisitors.
Thanks for the video. Just a suggestion for soldering get some flux, this is just a suggested type. MG Chemicals 8341 No Clean Flux Paste. Watched lots of repair videos on GPUs and they use lots of flux to desolder as well as soldering parts. Started using flux for some hobby work and it makes solder a lot easier.
These shipping companies need to really start taking accountability for the way these things are handled. People actually go to all the trouble of getting packages ready and deal with the always rising cost of shipping, but then you have to deal with the guy shoving the box into the truck giving no care to the FRAGILE label on the box....ugh.
Not all electrolytics leak like this, just the counterfit ones that surged into the market in the 90's, they were put in everything, looked like the high quality ones but were made as cheap as they could be.
I had a DCC recorder/player, and a portable DCC player. They were excellent with their sound quality, but the portable one's battery life was poor (NI-CAD) and recordable CDs soon expunged the DCC. Great idea and quality though.
I sold many electronic devices on ebay and the amount of packaging I see on every boxes that passes here is quite low to my standards. I usually wrap the device in bubble first and tape that bubble tight to the device. Then, pick a box wich allows about 3 inch of padding on each side of the device. then, I use left overs of coroplast to line the walls of the box. I use length corresponding to side down, bottom, side up, fold top and repeat this with a second sheet for the other orientation. then I lay paper balls from scrap newspaper tightly packed around the device and squish the thing closed. once all taped up, hardly any puncture can reach thru the coroplast to damage the unit and coroplast make corners of the box very resistant. I never had a single return over many years of worldwide shipping. When the unit is a heavy one or a very special thing, I don't hesitate to add another layer of double boxing the crap out of it despite the extra shipping cost. All the time, buyers really appreciate the care I take with the overkilled packaging, valuing the extra cost by the fact that sometimes, money can't buy another one. Have a look at barry's 8 track repair, he has an old video where he shows how he want you to pack and ship him your radio and if you fail to pack and ship him the way he want to receive it, he'll just refuse you as a customer. To me, taking an hour to pack a thing isn't a waste of time, it's part of a ebay dealer seller that sell rare and hard to replace stuff.
For anyone interested in the song I featured in this episode, the link is in the description! TH-cam's UI changes seem to really be downplaying the role of video descriptions, which is frustrating -- I put lots of useful information and credits there!
Realy enjoyed the video ! But then I am a dcc fan as well . In fact dcc is what got me to your channel.Your right having a passionate community makes all the difference.
Perhaps there will be a Minidisc museum one day .
I remember when those Phillips units cameout and I got to listen to one myself I bought a mini disc .
9:58 Excellent song choice! Links into the narrative so well. I enjoy those touches in production, both to watch and create myself. Finding that right song really is a good feeling.
It's a broken link for me. It seems to be appending something extra at the end.
Mate buy a DAW and start making your own electronic music its a lot of fun. Maybe you can do a show on the evolution of music softwear?
I'm glad you got some use out of the parts I sent, even if they were in worse shape than we'd hoped!
They still had been used to save the deck so thank you to make possible us to have this video to watch
Dankjewel Emily
Thanks Emily! Your the best. Have you always had a good heart?
Thank you for helping revive other DCC with your help. Glad to see helping hand in need.
God bless you!
That was really cool that you had those parts kicking around .
On behalf of the DCC Museum: Thank you so much for revisiting DCC! It's great that you now have a working recorder, and it's great to hear and see your high praise for this format.
We've had some interesting developments in the DCC world lately and the improved read/write board for 1st generation recorders is one of the most important ones since the demise of the format. There's more to come!
Glad to be of service Colin. The DCC Museum is dedicated to keeping the format alive and we made you a promise in the previous video to help with your Philips DCC 900. It did take longer as expected, but we are all happy and proud with the result, but especially the way you visually told your DCC story.
It does not surprise me that people in the Netherlands were helpful to you. I lived in the Netherlands 2018 t/m 2020. It is such a great country. Take away most of the problems in the USA, and you get the Netherlands. I liked everything there except for the weather. After living there only two years, I now feel "homesick" for the Netherlands.
That transition at 10:10 from background to foreground audio was so expertly done that I thought for a while you had just put some generic background track over copyrighted music, and only noticed otherwise when the tape "glitched".
As always, excellent production values and a compelling story well told. :)
I thought the exact same thing! Great video.
anyone know what the song is?
@@loz9324It’s in the description. :)
@@starbase218 thanks
I thought that too. It was seamless, too much so to believe it!
My dad made those replacement boards. Cool to see them in a video of a TH-camr that I watch!
you have a cool dad..je mag best trots zijn op je pa.
@@ronaldpors9282 Ben ik zeker
I gotta say I have no real interest in this sort of equipment but I absolutely enjoy watching you give this old stuff the time and diligence it deserves. There's an honest intellectualism in all of your videos and they're just a pleasure to watch.
So glad you finally fixed the DCC player, because it’s such a rare audio equipment! I love that you’re putting a lot of effort into preserving these relics!
I love this format
I bought a deck from DCC museum
The guys there are very nice helpful and very knowledgeable
The sound is smoother than CD
I remember seeing Phillips DCC at the BX at my first base. Thought it was a neat idea but couldn’t afford it’s price. Now seeing the issues with them as they age is another reason I prob never own one. It’s a great history piece of the format wars of the day. Glad you got yours working and how a community was so helpful. May you get many years out of your DCC
I am really glad that DCC Museum and the DCC Community is keeping the format alive by making new 3rd parts for the decks! I am now wanting to get into this format!
Ralf, and everyone else involved at the DCC Museum are awesome! Ive gotten a few parts and advice for my own DCC players
Thanks. Keeping the DCC format alive.
Even though many of your video pursuits do not end with successes, I really enjoy being part of the journey to try and restore old tech from my youth. I've been inspired to buy older tech on eBay and show it to my kids so they can experience how we lived before Smartphones and the Internet took over the world.
This past summer I purchased a Philips DCC 951 out of the same curiousity. Back in the day I was big into Minidiscs, but regarded DCC as a bad idea. I thought perhaps it was time to give it another chance. Thankfully, being a third generation, the 951 does not have your issue with the capacitors. Unfortunately, I still think it is terribly flawed.
One thing that intrigued me about DCC is the ability to output standard Cassettes tapes over the digital outputs, it converts on the fly and works very well. Honestly, as a player of standard analog cassette tapes it is fairly outstanding; it sounds much, much better than my old Technics RS-TR272 which was a lower end deck when I bought it new in the mid 90s and is now in serious need of belt replacements. The engineering of the DCC 951 is really impressive in that respect.
The problem is that after playing only 4 standard compact cassettes, the heads need cleaning and cannot even playback DCCs anymore. In fact, DCC experts such as those at the DCC museum, strongly suggest never playing compact cassettes on a DCC machine because of how sensitive the tape heads are to the ferric oxide that gets shed during normal use. That sharply limits how useful this deck is as I only own two pre-recorded DCC releases and have no intention of purchasing very expensive new old-stock cassettes and trying to record more. I may just use it to play old analog tapes and ignore DCC altogether instead of needing to constantly clean the heads. I would much rather use one of my NetMD portable minidisc recorders or the Minidisc deck in my hifi for recording, given that new minidiscs, which are still manufactured in Japan, are only a fraction of the price of DCCs and used ones are even cheaper.
It is an interesting technology to be sure with very impressive engineering behind it, but it did not survive long enough for it to be improved or perfected the way minidisc was. In the end, my opinion from 1993 is unchanged as minidisc is definitely the superior format.
I have the DCC951 and I have played back analog tapes as well (can be used for digitzing via SPDIF/TOS out). No issue observed. DCC951 sound quality is really good, especially on prerecorded tapes.
So happy for you. Something about DCC, DAT, MD that streaming will never compare to IMHO. Enjoy your DCC
Wow, there is a museum for an audio format I never heard of until today. Neat.
no mater how complex or simple electronics components i see getting repair, it warms my heart someone goes trough the problems doing it.
Great video as always, Colin! A happy ending to a project thought to be dead in its tracks.
To those curious, the song being played from the DCC is "Better Than This" by Dan Mason ダン·メイソン.
A classic format, wounded by the format wars but not forgotten. It’s great to see it surviving and still being used by enthusiasts.
Hearing this unit finally play was almost emotional. So happy you got a working DCC!!!! These decks are just beautiful to look at. Nice job, Colin! Great video!
I find using a low temperature solder really helps to remove QFPs without overstressing them or damaging them - add some to all the pins, it mixes with the existing solder, lowering it's melting temperature and staying liquid longer, and then the chip can just be shaken off the board! Makes cleaning the pins much easier too :)
So glad to see you have a working unit again! I remember around 1993 they aired the first DCC music here on the radio. A 48 kHz instrumental track that was magic to my ears. That is my memory of DCC in the 90's.
The vibe on those videos is just so nice, it makes me feel nostlagic of an era where i'd follow my father in electronic shops, not understanding anything but enjoying seeing all kind of computer parts ^^ (and hoping that there would be video games)
Bravo, definitely sums up a journey many might not take. As much as I luv cassettes, MDs have always been my preferred “fabled” unicorns. Of which you’ve inspired ideas many times.👍🏾✌🏾✊🏾
If you're an American, good luck finding on in the US. They were even less successful than DCC in the US.
The moment I recieved this video notification I instinctively knew it was a read-write board job from DrDcc since I am subbed to both your channels. 😉
What an awesome conclusion! Great to have it back working. I love your success stories. Keep up the good work!
I remember when I was at Virgin Music Store in Paris France in 1993, there was a dcc player that you could try yourself, I was very impressed and told my Dad about it, since it was Standard Cassette compatible! We never got one.
But 1995 I bought me the MZ-1 from Sony for a ridiculous 1000 Swiss francs , because you didn't have to fast forward or rewind Minidiscs. 🙂 I still got all my Minidiscs, and two non working MDS-501, but the MZ-1 is long gone. 😕
Cheers from Magog-Canada
Glad to see you finally got a functional deck, really cool to see the deck in action! It’s unfortunate to see how scarce parts and units are since they weren’t that popular when new, but it’s really nice to see new replacement parts being made.
I was already keen on this repair! Thank you so much!
You and Techmoan are my favorite channels on TH-cam now.
Must admit, I'm not familiar with this format at all really, so the fact you (with the support of the user community) were able to get your deck running, is all the more satisfying to watch.
That was a heck of a ride.
Thank you for sharing! I remember seeing DCC advertised in the Radio Shack catalog, along with CD-i, but I do not remember seeing DCC in real life, as opposed to CD-i which had a demonstration unit set up in the store.
I sent my portable dcc player to the dcc musuem they do a great job. A seller sold me one that was supposed to be refurbished but it had a motor problem. I have the same panasonic you have in an earlier video the one with a glass door.
Man I love your retro persistence, always fun to watch these videos 😊
Always surprised when I see expensive, rare, delectate electronics sent through the mail in such flimsy cardboard boxes.
I ship vintage electronics for a living, I was surprised the items weren't double boxed and should have been encased in styrofoam.
What a great video and enjoyable. Some people think that just a simple bubble wrap foil on it is a mega 0 in terms of protection. Multiple layers, absorbent material as a buffer between the items and the box is the only way.
Bravo! I love reproduction boards! If you EVER need solder work done Colin, let me know. I will do most things for free. You offer some great content and helping others means a lot to me.
Well done Colin, fantastic work buddy 👏 👍🏻
Oh wow. Damaged in shipping? That legit hit me right in the feels. That's a shame. Love your persistence though. That's some real, inspiring stuff right there!
This is superb that you got it running the new board is a great bit of kit .
This is the same issue with the Sony GV-8 Video Walkman from 1988, the LCD back board had a bunch of caps in one corner which usually led to lots of damage. I do have 2 x fully working GV-8s but this was after buying around 15 of them.
I purchased the matching receiver and CD changer for this model of Philips back in the early 90's and still have them. They are connected up and work but I rarely use them. I remember wanting the DCC player as well but price and lack of ever seeing any mainstream music released on the format kept me from buying it.
“Cassette blocked” is a common error display . Fortunately my Phillips only does this on an intermittent basis. When it does, I use a butter knife to gently nudge the loading door open. Great sounding format and I still buy them.
I JUST watched the first part to this. And I was really hoping somebody would make a replacement board. So happy. Great work and thanks so much for the videos!
It's always good to know all the technologies that existed. Too bad that in my country I had never seen or seen any device with this technology, unless, importing. The cassette tapes that existed here were the traditional ones. Great video and thank you!😀
Awesome video. I'll probably never go after DCC but you tell great stories with great editing.
Just love your well explained videos and the high quality footage and sound that goes along with them. BR, Per (DK)
I did not know about this format. I suddenly had the urge to get one. Must...fight...it!
😂😂😂
With these prices, I'll pass on getting into DCC, but I'm glad you finally where able to get a working deck.
Music:
"Better Than This"
Performed by Dan Mason
From album "Sever"
Happy to see your dcc up and running again. I have a second gen Technics RS-DC8 that needs repair and I have been procrastinating that for a long time now. I am sure I shall need to get an additional deck like you did and probably few more parts to make that possible. So far I managed to repair a few rare CD transports Technics made, few analogue decks and some rare Amps. My knowledge is limited so certain repairs i have to outsource to specialists that seam to be hard to find nowadays.
The RS-DC8 is possibly the hardest to restore. We have made a video about it with that same title lol. New gear, capacitors, belts at least. We are happy to help with services in Europe and N-America.
This was Simply Awesome to Watch and Made even myself feel a little more Confident about my own DCC Machine.
I own a Marantz DD82 that I bought brand new in 1992 and although it’s still mint and the Cover has never been off ironically it’s still playing perfectly as well as recording with no issues.
30yrs of Not Really regular use yet still amazing it’s Playing like a trooper still.
My only Thoughts now are do I Get the lid off and Give the Capacitors a once over🤔
Oh and the Original Remote Is also Working fine👍
If you still want to keep using your DCC, you really need to replace those caps! The trouble is that when the caps are on their way out, they will take the head with them! And those heads are even rarer than the read/write boards. The fact that it is still playing makes the recapping allmost 100% succes!
I found one of these decks a couple years ago for only $20 basically brand new, and it had the same issues these all did. I wanted to get into the format, but after doing the cap replacment to no avail, and finding out blank DCC tapes were $30 a piece, I sold it.
I appreciate DCC as an interesting piece of history, and no shade towards anyone in the DCC community, but I think the whole format is a lost cause. Aside from being backwards compatible with cassettes, (which from my interactions with the DCC Museum isn't even recommended as it can "damage the heads,") the format has no advantage over something like minidisc or even the uncompressed yet now similarly priced DAT format, and I can see why it failed.
Shipping in the us sounds a bit hit and miss...
I am glad you kept the momentum.
Congrats!!!!
Congratulations! Well worth getting done .
Congrats on the new working unit.
this makes me genuinely happy
Third time a charm. Got my third device few days ago and it works. I was really surprised. So now i have one dcc900 and two dcc 730.
Hello Colin, it's Colin. I fixed my DCC900 with just new capacitors and cleaning up. Well, fixed in that it plays DCC tapes with no errors. It's not playing analogue ones, but I'll leave that. You've got to know when to stop, and it's not really wise to play too many analogue tapes on DCC decks anyway. It also required new pinch rollers from the DCC Museum (quite expensive though).
Yeah, I don’t think I really have any aspirations to play analog tapes in this deck - it sounds like that was a troublesome proposition even back when these were new.
Man it's good you got that deck in one piece. Im kind of tied off shopping companies using our packages as footballs or whatever they might be doing to them. I loved to collect G1 Transformers. And I found a G1 Trypticon (large walking dinosaur that transforms into a city) for a reasonable price. I asked for it to be sent with a signature required, hoping I would get a notice to pick it up at the post office because porch pirates are a thing around here. But the mailman left it on my doorstep on a rainy day, and the box looked like it was hit by a car from sitting on the road. I was fuming. It was full of water, I had to let it sit and drain in my bathtub! Luckily the seller packed it in a water tight bag with lots of sour pockets and the toy was undamaged. That was surprising since these have foil and paper stickers and that old plastic gets pretty brittle as see know.
I have arranged for all of my parcels delivered to the local post office (including those from Amazon). This prevents theft, weather damage, and most other issues. Some sellers will not ship to that address, so I just go elsewhere for my purchases; their loss.
Yes!!! Glad you finally got one to work.
Glad you got that deck going dude I had a realistic deck from the 90s it was cool but long gone now
DCC is my fave ill-fated format of all time.The story behind it, the form factor, the era, the unrealistic idealism for a digital format that still had to wound back and forth... Technology-wise and how far it had gotten, was admirable, but it was hopelessly doomed from the outset.
Colin, there is something about DCC that grabs my ear. It's like the old AKAI samplers. There's that old bit depth that seems to add to the sound . Nice video man.
I bought my DCC730 few years ago from the Netherlands shipped to the US sound and safe, No leak syndrome.
Glad to hear that finally yr dcc900 is working now! Yahoo~ actually I was quite confused why Philips released dcc at that time, becoz I would like to pick DAT for the tape recording/playing in digital.
I had a similar issue with one of these decks, and finally got it working after changing the leaky capacitors and much repair work on the PCB. Albeit in my case that the service mode showed that one of the 9 heads was already dead, so the deck was running without any error correction capability from the remaining 8 heads, and very occasionally exhibited glitches from uncorrectable errors. I’m kind of surprised watching this that replacing the damaged board alone works as a fix. I’d always been under the impression that the head itself and the board were a matched pair, and that it was always necessary to replace both together.
Sadly though, all my efforts eventually came to nothing because somehow in the final stage of my trying to tidy up the repair after MANY hours of work, a second of the 9 heads was lost, and it became game over at that point 😢
Great to see it working. I got in to minidisc again myself thanks to the netMD software.
2:13 that's a pretty advanced audio system you've got here (for a brief moment I forgot I'm not in 90's but 2023)
This was a super dope episode and that insanely awesome feeling of "completion" as you got this thing up and running cannot be overstated! I wonder, though, do you think a company like PCBWay could have gotten you hooked up with a replacement board? Like if you sent them the specs? Obviously it'd be a bare board, but I wonder if they could replicate the traces and layout if the options mentioned in this video ever become unavailable.
The board is multilayer, so there’s some serious engineering effort involved in reproducing it - a PCB manufacturer can’t simply clone it.
@@ThisDoesNotCompute Plus cloning it when so much work has gone into it would just not feel right, and you'd have to manually solder a bunch of components to it.
@@ThisDoesNotCompute What you're saying there makes perfect sense. I can't even pretend to know enough about PCBs and how they're set up to speak intelligently upon this. I just remember hearing about PCBWay and their services and didn't know if that'd be a viable option ❤
@@DaveAdams222 PCBWay is make PCBs from the data you send them i.e. Gerber files and NC Drill files. One would have to reverse engineer and design a copy PCB (something I do as a hobby when I'm bored of an evening). TBH those PCBs do not look multilayer, only double sided. Cheers, A
I have never seen in person, a dcc, or a player, but I do remember seeing an ad in Billboard with Cathy Dennis dcc. Interesting that a week after my cassette version crapped out in my tape deck, rubbing oxide onto read head and basically eliminating treble (which is how almost all tapes die), that this would pop up in my suggested viewing! Around the same time Digalog cassettes were appearing, iirc? That never caught on either, though it was good, and made tapes hiss free with Dolby b up to any volume I'd ever listen at!
When shipping you are best to have as little as possible touching the outer box then any impact on the side of the box will not be transferred to the contents. Just have the ends of the case resting on the box. Bubble wrap offers very little protection IMHO. If needed double box so the inner box doesn't get impact as much. I've shipped valuable vintage and modern synthesizers around the UK and to Europe with never any problems.
I dimly remember these around the same time as the minidisc, which I adopted. I think everything about these were more expensive, AND you had to wait for the tape to FF or REW. Minidisc: no Brainer. I saw a comment on here that says these are VERY sensitive to Ferrous Oxide from normal tapes, so you couldn't actually use them. I can't imagine how they thought this would take off. Philips MADE CD's a thing!
I owned one in the 90s. I can't explain it, but I always thought it sounded better than CD. BUT it suffered from one major problem.
It was eating my cassette tapes. Since these were very expensive, I sold it and bought a mini disc deck. A good choice.
I read an article on a very old magazine ( I think it was very early 90s), someone in China got a drawer type tape player. I was very interested to seeing one, I know from other TH-camr and it might be Sony, which should match the time. But also happy to see there is another one ( might later than sony) who made similar design machine.
I guess I got lucky.
Picked up a DCC951 in beautiful condition in a thrift store around the corner for a measly 30€..😃
Tested it with regular cassette, works perfectly.
Now source a DCC and test that too..
I remember doing a similar repair on JDM Panasonic NV-FS900 back in early 2000s. Surface mount caps used in late 80s to early 90s were really bad.
6:12 I'm impressed that the non-populated C197 was included in the new PCB design - it just seems right somehow.
I have a Pioneer commerical Amp which has a A/D board that uses to electrolytics and they too started going bad but they did very little damage to the board .
Hi, I´ve the same Problem at my DCC900. Analog cassettes play very good but digital cassettes have no sound. I found the Problem at the R/W-Board: R135 and R117! Mark the Position of them, than turn a few times left and right.After that back to the marked position and digital cassettes sounds again.There was some dirt at the Resisitors.
Glad to see perseverance pay off!
so inspiring video, thanks for this. I'll post myself a video of a dcc900 repair soon. (analogic and digital, because both have problems)
Great to see another successful repair! Which song is that on the tape? Sounds a lot like something from Tears for Fears/Roland Orzabal.
Thanks for the video.
Just a suggestion for soldering get some flux, this is just a suggested type. MG Chemicals 8341 No Clean Flux Paste. Watched lots of repair videos on GPUs and they use lots of flux to desolder as well as soldering parts.
Started using flux for some hobby work and it makes solder a lot easier.
very good .. glad you had help to sort that out...
Does every shipping company know when you’re shipping a DCC and just kick it in the warehouse? 😂
These shipping companies need to really start taking accountability for the way these things are handled. People actually go to all the trouble of getting packages ready and deal with the always rising cost of shipping, but then you have to deal with the guy shoving the box into the truck giving no care to the FRAGILE label on the box....ugh.
Not all electrolytics leak like this, just the counterfit ones that surged into the market in the 90's, they were put in everything, looked like the high quality ones but were made as cheap as they could be.
I had a DCC recorder/player, and a portable DCC player. They were excellent with their sound quality, but the portable one's battery life was poor (NI-CAD) and recordable CDs soon expunged the DCC. Great idea and quality though.
This was well put together but there's a very good reason formats go the way of the dinosaurs. Digital tech that 'wears out'? Next!
Been there. So disheartening. Throwing the money. Gj on the faith and patience.
I sold many electronic devices on ebay and the amount of packaging I see on every boxes that passes here is quite low to my standards. I usually wrap the device in bubble first and tape that bubble tight to the device. Then, pick a box wich allows about 3 inch of padding on each side of the device. then, I use left overs of coroplast to line the walls of the box. I use length corresponding to side down, bottom, side up, fold top and repeat this with a second sheet for the other orientation. then I lay paper balls from scrap newspaper tightly packed around the device and squish the thing closed. once all taped up, hardly any puncture can reach thru the coroplast to damage the unit and coroplast make corners of the box very resistant. I never had a single return over many years of worldwide shipping. When the unit is a heavy one or a very special thing, I don't hesitate to add another layer of double boxing the crap out of it despite the extra shipping cost. All the time, buyers really appreciate the care I take with the overkilled packaging, valuing the extra cost by the fact that sometimes, money can't buy another one. Have a look at barry's 8 track repair, he has an old video where he shows how he want you to pack and ship him your radio and if you fail to pack and ship him the way he want to receive it, he'll just refuse you as a customer. To me, taking an hour to pack a thing isn't a waste of time, it's part of a ebay dealer seller that sell rare and hard to replace stuff.
True.. the packing here was terrible .....
I do love me some Dan Mason!
I chose Sony MD over DCC and still use it. I can't believe how expensive some prerecorded MDs run on eBay.
glad this story has a happily ever after
Nice video and really interesting info. I learned something today 👍
I love a good revisit.
Bravo! Great video! Cheers from Detroit!