Philips DCC 900 Cassette Deck

Last week (Dec. 13) I bought a Philips DCC 900 model digital cassette deck at the GW for $30 (orig. $900 in '92)...

I plugged it in and it worked just fine, playing analog cassettes.

Then I brought it to my parent's home on the weekend, set it up in their basement stereo, and it was fine on Saturday too.

On Monday night I visited them again, and turned it on for a few minutes, and went upstairs to download some music from the Net. My Dad panicked and instead of turning off the A/V receiver, or turning down the volume, he turned off the power bar-surge protector.

When I returned about 10-15 minutes later I found the sound off and it was unplugged. After plugging the unit back in again, I was listening to a tape and then I heard some crackling sounds from the Mantovani Silent Night tape similar to an LP crackling and popping...

Then it became more frequent and louder in the right speaker, and the sound in both speakers was a bit quieter. I had to turn up the volume to -13 dB to get decent sound and normally it would have been not set that high.

So at first I thought that the the cassette deck got zapped or something, and waited until today (Wednesday Dec. 19) to take it back to my place.

Plugged it in and for a few minutes it was fine. Then had plugged in another machine to show it to someone and plugged in the cassette deck again and it started to crackle in the right speaker like on Monday.

So my friend says that it sound like a short circuit somewhere. Also when I had brought it in on Saturday afternoon I only waited for about 30 minutes from the cold weather and maybe should have waited longer for the machine to thaw. It was sitting in the trunk for about 45 minutes...

So what should I do? I'm getting attached to this thing. I like the NEXT PREV buttons to skip back and forth between tracks and would like to find a DCC tape to try recording on it, but it looks like it needs repairs already... Do you think that this thing was faulty even before I bought it last week and the problems were just starting to occur on Monday?

how is this dcc going on now?

have you found a dcc tape to record?

if you can make recording on dcc, you can loop a signal and record it. mean while, try to listen whether the pop still there.

i have a fault dcc 900 too, but cost me triple the money that you spent.

i would suspect the e-cap on the head amplifier has some leaking.

anyway, i am look for an head amplifier board and probably a whole dcc 900 for part.

I also have a DCC-900. It sat dormant for awhile. I tried a DCC tape a couple of weeks ago and now I get sound out of only one channel. Any ideas? I also have a DCC 130 portable. The battery pack is dead(I do have the AC adapter). I contacted Philips a couple of weeks ago and there are no replacements. The battery is Ni-Cd Battery SBC6430 DC 4.8V 1300mAh. It looks like 4 AA batteries in a case but the batteries are a little smaller than AA. The batteries are physically connected to one another in vertical rows of 2 batteries each and they are also connected to the case vertically on the negative end. Any ideas for a replacement?

i know the DCC 130's battery pack is unique. it seems no replacement available.

if you have both channel at monitor loop through mode. i would assume the a/d-d/a board is fine.

head amplifier board us multiplex time division sharing to transmit 7 channels signals from each head with one RDMUX. so i would assume the head amplifier board is close to fine.

then, the only thing that i would suspect is PASC board, but it is very complicated.