Soldering On

What do you call a digital camera with a broken power supply? A paperweight. The power supply for one of my favourite old cameras broke today. It’s a big complicated circuit board, as you can see above. Fortunately the fix was quick and easy. On the bottom right you can see the power input socket which is soldered directly into the circuit board. Over the last 20 years the waggling that it got as people plugged and unplugged the cable had caused the soldered joints to fail. I just had to put some more solder on the two connections and we are back in ancient digital business. Note that this side of the circuit (marked primary) is at mains voltage, and so I was very careful about making sure it was turned off and disconnected before I ventured inside the box.