Greetings all!

[Norman Lin <nlin@getnet.com>]

Greetings all PXL-2000'ers!



I just discovered this mailing list by doing a web search on

"PXL 2000".  I've had a PXL-2000 for about 3 years now and I

actually started a small mailing list 2 years ago.  Unfortunately

interest in the list (which at its peak only had ~15/20 people)

dwindled and due to job changes, moving, etc., the list eventually fell

into disuse.  However, I do have a nice archive of articles stashed

away in a .ZIP file somewhere, which I would be happy to submit to

the list or to the archive (if there is one).



Does anyone on here have a lot of experience repairing PXL-2000's?

I'm not afraid to dig into the guts of the PXL2000 and in fact I

have performed a number of minor repairs over the years (mostly

stemming from the "record-button" internal actuation switch getting 

bent out of shape, requiring me to bend it back in order for depression

of the "record" button to actuate the motor).  For the past 1.5 years

my PXL2000 has had slowly degenerating sound, and now the sound recording

is all but dead.  However, sound playback is fine -- in other words,

old videos which I've recorded play back with fine sound, but new

videos I record have practically no sound.  What's even odder,

if open up the camera and I try recording in "live-video" mode with a TV

hooked up so I can see/hear what's happening, I can get the audio recording

to work for a couple of seconds simply by touching (and thereby grounding

to my body) one of the solder dots on the circuit board.  This creates

a loud hum while my finger is in contact with the solder dot, and then

afterwards, I can hear the sound recording functioning fine through the

TV.  But after a few seconds, the sound dies out slowly.  It's as if

some automatic-level-control for the microphone is getting short-circuited

and is muting the microphone completely; if I temporarily "reset" the ALC

by touching the PCB then it works fine again until the ALC drags the

sound down to nothing again.  Does anyone know enough about the PXL

internal circuitry to know how to attack this problem?



Anyway, I'm glad I found this list.  I hope this list will be around

for a while!  As far as I know, I was the second person to try starting

a PXL 2000 mailing list; my predecessor's list also slowly lost interest

and participation, eventually fading into nothingness.  Is there an

archive of PXL material?  If not, I might be able to set up a section

on my web page containing archived articles/tech info.  Actually I've

been meaning to add PXL2000 stuff to my web page for quite some time now.



Cheers,

-Norman