I just joined the RPF a few weeks ago and wanted to say what a great site this is and I'm glad to be a member.
I purchased an MR Tricorder(#907) a few weeks ago on Ebay from a seller who typically lists MR items that were returned to MR for various reasons. I paid 260 for it so I thought it was a decent deal. He did clearly state in his auction that it was a non-working Tricorder.
I received the Tricorder on Wed evening. I opened it up and put in the batteries and as advertised, no power.
I started taking the TC apart to see if it was something simple. I noticed the someone tried to make repairs to different areas. One area of interest was the rather poor soldering job on the battery case. :eek
After I removed the giant blobs of solder and reconnected the batteries, still nothing.
I then moved onto the main power switch located under the side cover. With my trusty fluke multi-meter in hand I determined the switch was bad. I tested this by wrapping a thin piece of wire around both leads of the switch. Sure enough, I had power to the main circuit board.
The switch was glued into place, so I removed it. The other side of the switch had 2 more terminals so I tested them with my fluke and sure enough they worked. I removed the wires from the bad side, and soldered them to the good side.
Even after this, the TC still would not power up. I emailed an MR rep from the forums but she wasn't able to help me with any sort of schematics. MR doesn't release that sort of information so I was on my own. After checking different components I found a bad resistor that needed to be replaced. A quick trip to electronics store on Thursday morning took care of that. After replacing the resistor, still no joy. I knew I was missing something. I kept looking at the circuit board and wasn't sure what one of the components were.
In the picture above you can see it extending out from the CB. It's a glass tube with what looked like a filament inside. I thought it may be some sort of a fuse so I used my meter and it tested as open. I used some wire and shorted it and much to my surprise I had life to my Tricorder.
So I needed to find out what this mysterious item was. Tried searching my old electronics books but couldn't find it. I remembered reading in the MR instructions that when you close the display screen that it would power off any existing functions. So I thought I might be onto something. Sure enough, it turns out that this weird tube is a magnetic switch. The problem is that the magnet inside the TC wasn't strong enough to activate it reliably so I decided just to bypass it all together.
Here you can see the jumper I put into place to bypass the switch.
Here's the end result. My Tricorder working....
I already own an MR communicator, now the Tricorder. I also purchased the MR Enterprise from a fellow member here on the RPF which will be delivered next week. All I need to do is find an MR phaser for a decent price and I'll be good to go. :thumbsup
I purchased an MR Tricorder(#907) a few weeks ago on Ebay from a seller who typically lists MR items that were returned to MR for various reasons. I paid 260 for it so I thought it was a decent deal. He did clearly state in his auction that it was a non-working Tricorder.
I received the Tricorder on Wed evening. I opened it up and put in the batteries and as advertised, no power.
I started taking the TC apart to see if it was something simple. I noticed the someone tried to make repairs to different areas. One area of interest was the rather poor soldering job on the battery case. :eek
After I removed the giant blobs of solder and reconnected the batteries, still nothing.
I then moved onto the main power switch located under the side cover. With my trusty fluke multi-meter in hand I determined the switch was bad. I tested this by wrapping a thin piece of wire around both leads of the switch. Sure enough, I had power to the main circuit board.
The switch was glued into place, so I removed it. The other side of the switch had 2 more terminals so I tested them with my fluke and sure enough they worked. I removed the wires from the bad side, and soldered them to the good side.
Even after this, the TC still would not power up. I emailed an MR rep from the forums but she wasn't able to help me with any sort of schematics. MR doesn't release that sort of information so I was on my own. After checking different components I found a bad resistor that needed to be replaced. A quick trip to electronics store on Thursday morning took care of that. After replacing the resistor, still no joy. I knew I was missing something. I kept looking at the circuit board and wasn't sure what one of the components were.
In the picture above you can see it extending out from the CB. It's a glass tube with what looked like a filament inside. I thought it may be some sort of a fuse so I used my meter and it tested as open. I used some wire and shorted it and much to my surprise I had life to my Tricorder.
So I needed to find out what this mysterious item was. Tried searching my old electronics books but couldn't find it. I remembered reading in the MR instructions that when you close the display screen that it would power off any existing functions. So I thought I might be onto something. Sure enough, it turns out that this weird tube is a magnetic switch. The problem is that the magnet inside the TC wasn't strong enough to activate it reliably so I decided just to bypass it all together.
Here you can see the jumper I put into place to bypass the switch.
Here's the end result. My Tricorder working....
I already own an MR communicator, now the Tricorder. I also purchased the MR Enterprise from a fellow member here on the RPF which will be delivered next week. All I need to do is find an MR phaser for a decent price and I'll be good to go. :thumbsup
