hello all-
our station bought 7 PMD670 decks under a grant from the CPB to
accomplish regional recordings of community people and events. the
PMD670 suits our needs well but i have uncovered a defect.

on all of our 7 units, the rechargeable nicad battery (RB1100) runs
down overnite when the unit is unplugged from the AC charger. Marantz
tech support was able to duplicate this problem and is working with
the engineers in Japan to find a solution. if the problem is in the
software, the customer can update this themself but if they find the
problem resides in the firmware, the units will have to be sent into
Marantz for a firmware update.

according to Marantz, they watched the battery discharge pattern on
the oscilloscope for 5 hours straight and they confirmed that the unit
does not enter "sleep mode" after the AC charging plug is removed.
they have discovered that if the unit is unplugged, then powered up,
then shut down the decks will enter sleep mode and the battery will
not be discharged. the battery can also be removed from the
compartment to retain the charge.

i am pleased to report Marantz took my report of this problem very
seriously and has every indication of resolving this issue within a
short time period. the service techs at Marantz have been personable
to me, actually talk to each other within the department and know me
when i call. it is easy within their service department to get
directly connected with the engineers who have worked on the design of
these decks and they will answer questions with enthusiasm. pretty
darn impressive for a company nowadays.

they have promised to email me as soon as the solution is found and if
it turns out to be a software issue, will send me the program
directly. they sent a confirmation email to ensure they had my email
address correct.

-dan

On Thu, 4 Dec 2003 19:52:26 -0800, Daniel Houg wrote
(in message ) :

on all of our 7 units, the rechargeable nicad battery (RB1100) runs
down overnite when the unit is unplugged from the AC charger.
--------------------------------snip----------------------------------

Many of Sony's portable decks over the years have done the same. I believe
the D7/D8 DAT deck and their "Pro" series analog cassette decks did the same
thing.

I got around it simply by removing the batteries when I needed to store the
unit for a period of days or weeks. I only put the batteries back in an hour
or two before I needed to use it.

I agree it's a design flaw, but I'm not convinced it's something they can fix
in software. I suspect it's a hardware thing related to wiring and how the
charger is implemented.

--MFW

In article writes:

on all of our 7 units, the rechargeable nicad battery (RB1100) runs
down overnite when the unit is unplugged from the AC charger. Marantz
tech support was able to duplicate this problem and is working with
the engineers in Japan to find a solution.

they have discovered that if the unit is unplugged, then powered up,
then shut down the decks will enter sleep mode and the battery will
not be discharged. the battery can also be removed from the
compartment to retain the charge.


At least there's an intermim solution. I suggest that you instruct
your users to remove the battery rather than go through the power
up/down sequence. It's quicker and absolutely bulletproof. I trust
there's another battery or Permacap that keeps any settings stored in
memory alive.

i am pleased to report Marantz took my report of this problem very
seriously and has every indication of resolving this issue within a
short time period.

This is so obvious, I'm surprised that they weren't aware of it. Don't
they ever test their battery powered equipment in the battery mode?
It's nice that they've been cooperative, but really strange that they
actually let it out of the door with this problem.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

On or about 5 Dec 2003 09:03:02 -0500, Mike Rivers allegedly wrote:

In article writes:

i am pleased to report Marantz took my report of this problem very
seriously and has every indication of resolving this issue within a
short time period.

This is so obvious, I'm surprised that they weren't aware of it. Don't
they ever test their battery powered equipment in the battery mode?
It's nice that they've been cooperative, but really strange that they
actually let it out of the door with this problem.


I've had a bit of experience with the earlier PMD690 and PMD680. It
appeared the System Control Processor in them must have been programmed by
a lowest cost tenderer, and I suspect the 670 will be not much different.
Some of our trainees found it was not too difficult to get the processor
confused. If that happens, the machine will just hang, and has to have
power disconnected and battery removed to reboot the thing. They are not
the most stable and reliable thing I've ever driven.

Fortunately, the occurence of that decreased as the trainees got more
experience, and presumably did things more like the machine expected them
to do.


Noel Bachelor noelbachelorAT(From:_domain)
Language Recordings Inc (Darwin Australia)