MC Escher; The email address on your posting no longer works, so Thank you so much for the instructions for fixing the camera. It's a shame you have to completely disembowel it to get at this little piece of bad engineering. I should have noted precisely where it was so next time I could just drill a hole in the plastic and go in with a bent paper clip... We send things like this to Mars and wonder why they don't always work. Now that I feel like a veteran neurosurgeon, I would like to contribute some comments. One would have had trouble prying your instructions from my cold dead hands when I was doing this, so important were they. a) You probably noticed that you numbered the steps 1,2,3,4,3,4,5 ... b) in the first step 3, I made the mistake of disconnecting the widest ribbon connector on the camera end, not the viewfinder end. Pull this connector directly up and it will come out of its socket. I futzed around, not knowing exactly how to pull them out, and when I finally did one the right way, it was the wrong end. This made it awkward and nearly impossible on the last step of reassembly. c) Getting the brackets in the back door assembly in the right configuration was touchy, and there may be two of those four screws that would be best left in position, perhaps the two shorter ones. (If it's short, put it back in, and don't remove it unless you have to) d) The connector for the ribbon cable mentioned in step 6 has two tiny plastic "keys" on either end which need to be pulled out. That releases it completely. e) In step 7, the tabs for the rubber grommets need to be pulled away from their centers, not "the center". I fretted while trying to pull them away from the center of the camera. f) The gear housing lid in step 8 is held on by 4 screws. g) Their might be a reason to lubricate the rods the laser assembly moves on while it's apart. Upon reassembly, the original problem (buzzing sounds and disk access) was fixed, however I was horrified to find it did not work right at first. It would not focus, and the viewfinder screen remained black, although the camera would record a blurry image. Then it gave an E:61:10 error. I removed the viewfinder assembly again and pushed at the connectors some more. It worked !!! Economics of the experience: a) It took me about three hours, but it would have taken substantial time to find a box, pack the camera, take it to the post office and do the paperwork. Not to mention the $200+ b) We know with confidence that the problem was not caused by using disks other than the official "mavica" disks, like I had worried. but c) There is the possibility of the little spring bracket bending out again with time, and so I will keep your instructions and the notes I made on them. If I knew the service center would REPLACE the defective part, it would almost be worth it to mail it out. The price of finding out would be for someone to take it apart, mark the little bracket, send it out, and then take it apart again after it came back. No thanks! Again, thank you for this contribution. May many people find it.

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