Aka Sony Handycam, nice little unit, until one day it fell from the headrest on the lounge room sofa, less than a metre onto the padded sofa seat ...we are talking a really 'soft' fall for a device such as this.

Next day when I turn it on, it claims the SD card is locked, and I go wtf, remove card to check, still unlocked, camera complains otherwise, try another couple of SD cards...same shit, camera's convinced SD cards are locked.

I think...well, sigh....something fallen into switch contacts? Dislodged cable? Solder joint somewhere?....who the hell knows, you'd have to open it up and inspect...and these things are worse than an iphone to teardown ; makes it into the 'later' basket, when I've got the time and right frame of mind to tackle the job...

...well, that happened this Sat just gone...bit over an hour of gently gently with hidden plastic clips, and after 5 or 6 layers and 20-something screws later (2 sizes and colours =), I was able to extract the memory card holder. I'll pop some pics up later....this is a US$100 part btw.

There's a spot on the backside of the pcb, where some NAND storage can be soldered for some models, and a tiny little button cell which I guess keeps clock/user settings or something going should the main battery go flat or be disconnected. The other side has the SD card holder, but this is a dual socket holder in that it's take standard SD cards, or the patented Sony 'memory stick' proprietary SD card...and if you don't mind reworking a new socket onto the pcb, they're pretty cheap.

The ribbon cable between pcba and the holder is tough as guts, almost over done, so I get the DMM out to buzz the holder card detect/locked switch operation...it's working? I do it at least 30 times with different SD cards, in both locked/unlocked state, and the 2 switches work fine, every single time .. 0|1 card unlocked and present, 1|1 card locked and present...it's not the switch, not the solder joints, it's good all the way back to pcba socket...damn, looks like pcba has lost the plot....

...do a bit of checking about online wrt this specific fault/handycam model....and find a few common threads explaining to try/use the Sony memory stick instead of SD card....nahh, surely not....but I can check this as housemate has a couple of those cards. Turns out the advice is accurate -- camera *does* work with the Sony memory stick, but still claims SD cards are locked...but....these card use different slots in the holder. What interested me was that two reports of this failure, indicated the user was actually recording a video at the time, when the camera stopped recording and displayed the SD card locked message....ie; smells like an electronics failure, and my instance of a soft drop onto a cushion was no required to make the fault manifest itself.

I go back to that button cell ...it's in a plastic holder, and SMD soldered to the board via 3 leg pads, I measure it as 0.7volts and appears a little swollen. Not that one knows what the nominal voltage of the cell is supposed to be, but probably not that =) In the process of doing this, I see what looks like one of the pads has lifted ; closer inspection reveals the lifted pad is indeed broken/cracked. M'kay...so what? I know that battery has gone defunct because it's long been annoying to reset date/time etc everytime the main battery goes flat (or you swap out batteries without charger attached), so as if this has anything to do with SD card lock status? Oh well...have power supply will travel, set 1.5volts at a guess and limit to 100ma, find a ground (batt - ...the broken track, so any ground will do), and inject power to the other side (batt +...remember, battery is out of circuit due to broken track =), turn the camera on....SD card no longer locked...FFS... serious? I wind it down to .7volts...still ok... .6volts, SD card locked...lol...