Fixing My Philips DCC Recorder for Good!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ม.ค. 2023
- A common and inevitable problem afflicts first-generation Digital Compact Cassette decks: failing capacitors. The fix wasn't as simple as replacing the faulty parts, though -- until now.
DCC Museum: www.dccmuseum.com
Featured music: "Better Than This" by Dan Mason (danmason.bandcamp.com/album/s....
Sources:
Philips Amsterdam building photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Magnavox DCC600 photo: spencertified.com/products/ma...
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Music by Epidemic Sound (www.epidemicsound.com).
Intro music by BoxCat Games (freemusicarchive.org/music/Bo.... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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?
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.
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 .
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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
Wow, there is a museum for an audio format I never heard of until today. Neat.
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!
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
What an awesome conclusion! Great to have it back working. I love your success stories. Keep up the good work!
That was a heck of a ride.
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.
50 years plus doing audio, DCC was/is curious. It is a tough haul as you have shown. My skills for are not great either on repair. The DCC is going against DAT, and SD recorders. The last I have extensive experience with. Way cool you had gotten support on your DCC issues, and a great video to show there is hope. I kind of take my time these days and hunt for an ultimate solution. The SSD getting so cheap, and the possibility of creating an SSD recorder is much closer than ever. I could even use my MOTU Ultralite mk.4 as a starting point since it has digital analog IO support, supply a dedicated Windows 10 computer which I have and even just use Audacity and call it a day. That would include live and recorded archives too. So basically for the cost of a new SSD I am flying along. Maybe later an SSD NAS. Really there is no reason to deal with the hassle of a moving transport. A hard to get parts. And not plentiful audio blank media. Trust me, I am from the school of the hard way. I am in the process of restoring a TEAC A-7300 reel to reel. It comes along nicely too. But the stress and anxiety that come with is great considering my modest skills. A great victory for you on this.
no mater how complex or simple electronics components i see getting repair, it warms my heart someone goes trough the problems doing it.
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.
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)
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.
A classic format, wounded by the format wars but not forgotten. It’s great to see it surviving and still being used by enthusiasts.
Man I love your retro persistence, always fun to watch these videos 😊
I was already keen on this repair! Thank you so much!
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. 😉
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!
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
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.
This is superb that you got it running the new board is a great bit of kit .
Well done Colin, fantastic work buddy 👏 👍🏻
Just love your well explained videos and the high quality footage and sound that goes along with them. BR, Per (DK)
Awesome video. I'll probably never go after DCC but you tell great stories with great editing.
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.
You and Techmoan are my favorite channels on TH-cam now.
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.
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!😀
I did not know about this format. I suddenly had the urge to get one. Must...fight...it!
😂😂😂
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!
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.
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!
Congrats on the new working unit.
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.
So happy for you. Something about DCC, DAT, MD that streaming will never compare to IMHO. Enjoy your DCC
Yes!!! Glad you finally got one to work.
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.
Congratulations! Well worth getting done .
this makes me genuinely happy
very good .. glad you had help to sort that out...
Nice video and really interesting info. I learned something today 👍
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.
Bravo! Great video! Cheers from Detroit!
With these prices, I'll pass on getting into DCC, but I'm glad you finally where able to get a working deck.
Glad you got that deck going dude I had a realistic deck from the 90s it was cool but long gone now
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.
Shipping in the us sounds a bit hit and miss...
I am glad you kept the momentum.
Congrats!!!!
Glad to see perseverance pay off!
“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.
Great to see it working. I got in to minidisc again myself thanks to the netMD software.
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.
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.
Great format
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 love a good revisit.
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 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.
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 bought my DCC730 few years ago from the Netherlands shipped to the US sound and safe, No leak syndrome.
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.
Now that is just awesome.
I do love me some Dan Mason!
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.
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.
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)
Great video.
Thanks
Congrats... finally!!
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!
6:12 I'm impressed that the non-populated C197 was included in the new PCB design - it just seems right somehow.
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!
Good video! I think its time to upgrade your soldering equipment. Have a look at the JBC Soldering station with hot swap tips..
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.
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.
Great to see another successful repair! Which song is that on the tape? Sounds a lot like something from Tears for Fears/Roland Orzabal.
I really wanna get one of these just to know how it sounds but as it’s Digital is there much point?
Would be great to see a video on the comparisons of early digital audio and how they compared to one another.
Love your videos. 👏🏻
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 .
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 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.
Music:
"Better Than This"
Performed by Dan Mason
From album "Sever"
Been there. So disheartening. Throwing the money. Gj on the faith and patience.
Well done for persisting with this. I wonder how your larger deck compares in sound quality to the smaller walkman style units ?
Wtg, good job!
Af the time or release I didn’t like the Philips design language. But looking to it today it definitely looks a lot better now.
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!
All the time I was looking at that corroded PCB and thinking "why not reverse engineer that thing and design a new one?"
I'm not even into DCC or obscure technologies like it, and my fingers were itching to try! hahaha