'Repairing' the unique Twin Tape Sony Walkman W800

picture the scene is 1985 and on the way home from school my friends and I decide to stop off at the shops and we go halves and pick up the latest spectrum game but then traveling home from the shops on the bus my friend gets a little bit concerned it says well how do we decide who gets to play the game first I hope that don't worry reach into my pocket and say t go here's one for you and here's one for me I mean oh nice as well with the help of the portable piracy machine the tape to tape Walkman before I go on I've got to say please don't copy your friends games because that is illegal and I've gotta cut endorse or condone illegal activities and besides which taping your friends copy of Zelda on the switch isn't going to get you very far nowadays that whole story was actually made up I didn't buy one of these back in the day because when I saw it in the lastest catalogue I remember thinking all those things I could do with it but at 160 pounds I decided not to get one and at the time I ended up spending quite a little bit less on something a lot more like this Iowa model in the middle here which had a 5 bank graphic equalizer auto-reverse inline remote control it's a lot slimmer as well of course so it's not off you really do need tape to tape on the go however I have to pick one of these up a couple of years ago because it's something that's always been playing on my mind since I first saw it that's hate to tape Wortman the only one that Sony ever brought I just had to own one for myself now this one was sold as in need of repair but still worth picking up I thought that on this side this is the B deck so here's the controls we've got record play stop rewind fast-forward and pause on that well flip it over on the a side we don't have record that's just a played exit play stop rewind fast-forward on the side headphones microphone eenie was sold with a microphone this one and then above there just a couple of other controls once it's let the tape type one two switch the Dolby noise reduction on and off notice under both those things we've got the letter A and that means they only apply to deck a deck B doesn't support any of those features so what we have here at very simple basic pretty much bottom-of-the-line Wortman sandwiched back-to-back in one machine there's no sophisticated things like auto reverse or track skip or logic controls ready that kind of business it's just two very simple decks according to Walkman Central the decks use our actions of so DW m10 mechanism which was used in this slimmest Walkman ever made and that ran off one double a of course this device therefore runs on two double-a batteries now it's being sat on the Shelf in a nonworking state for a couple of years but I am aware that if you put batteries in it and press play you can hear the motors inside running is just nothing spins around which of course means yes you've guessed it it needs new bells so let me try and open this up and replace it I've never opened a Walkman before I'm a little bit concerned about the fact that it's all tiny little person if I do open it up I'll never get it back together again but since the thing doesn't actually work I don't suppose it would be such a great loss anyway I better sort of jam it back together somehow and just leave it as an unusual ornament as equals before so let me try and get in here there's two screws in the side and two in the bottom here they're all tiny little screws but that takes the door off I've got no instructions on how to do this I'm just figuring it out as I go along now I've noticed the screws that came out of that door they're all different sizes if I just show you here in my hand I can get them all together for tiny little screws er just put two of them here with two different sizes just in the door so this is going to be fun putting back together I'll have to pay more attention so where I'm taking this screws out on because it looks like every single screw seems to be a slightly different length right now as for in the main part here now I don't really know which side to open up initially but there's only one side that seems have screws in it I open the B deck the a deck doesn't have any screws like this so it looks like this is a side that open so taking those four screws out of the deck part there and putting those separate in the lid dodging all the same size luckily see if this thing opens up now now it's still being held down by some things so let's try and figure out where we've got some more there's a couple more screws in the bottom here so I'll take those out as well don't still doesn't mob too there's a bit of metal he'll know what's up I wasn't expecting that so now I'm trying to figure out hold on which way up does that go back in uh something perhaps to figure out later on that's the hinge mechanism the part that it goes on the bottom of the door so I'll take it out there now need to take some more screws out to the side there's a couple on either side on the top here and one of these is particularly long as you can see compared to the other one so hopefully that's it though still more to go now it looks like the top will come off it's a little bit wobbly so just pull out and there we go now expecting a wire in there because that's the battery compartment but though it seems to just attach without a wire so there we go got it in half now now you can see how the belts got stuck on here if we run the route round all there and then try and rotate the wheel you can see how it's sticking to the wheel is glued to it this is of course what happens with old rubber belts in things they get this stickiness they perishes it's known and they lose their elasticity as well so definitely new belts of course we thought this was what the problem was so the motor will be spinning but nothing I'll be happening because in a date here 1985 that will be the date someone will put this together now it's a good job that this is a twin deck Wortman because the belt on the right hand sides come out of its track a little bit so I'm going to take that one off and use one on the left-hand side as a reference for how it should go round these wheels and I'm going to try and find a replacement belt to replacement belts one for either side now of course not all Wortman use the same size belt so I was trying to do a bit of research online finding what size belt should fit in a w 800 have no luck with that so instead I'm going to put this one in a circle and measure it and I can see this is about 5 centimeters across 50 millimeters so I'll order some of that size and a few just a bit smaller as well just in case it's stretched and they came they were from the UK so there are just a couple of days later but I noticed one thing to do seemed quite a bit thicker than the belt that came out of the machine now I ordered the thinnest belts that I could which I believe these ones are one millimeter across but you see the one out of the machine is a lot thinner than that I thought I'd give it a go anyway try the belt that I've got but as I was threading it through here I can see this is not going to work it just doesn't fit it's too thick it just keeps falling off the wheels and the reason is because those winds I'm a little notch on than where the belts supposed to ride inside well these belts just ride on the top of that they don't go inside the wheel so that was a bad idea I then went back to ebay strobe find some more unfortunately there's one chap in the world who can help me it's known as dr. walkman I believe on the walk move forums but on ebay goes by a different name however he's the guy who can supply the belts I need it's got a lot of different auctions for all different machines even mentions a machine that I've got the W 800 so I'm getting the right size and as opposed to the one millimeters thickness belts that you can get easily in the UK his custom made ones you can see they're only not point five two not point six millimeters so I ordered two sets and those arrived from Slovakia to the UK and only took perhaps four days or so now there's two different kinds of belts in here I'm not quite sure why that is perhaps summer for a different machine it's a multi-purpose set but I can tell the two on the left and the ones that I need those are the ones I'm going to install in here so all I have to do is thread this under here it's quite tricky but not incredibly difficult you just have to shove it under that carolling there and then put it around the motor on this end and then the other end just threads around following the route of the belt that's still on the other side now I'm sure someone will say that I have to do this with gloves on and I shouldn't be touching it with finger grease etc etc but look don't worry about it it's by Machine and it's all sorted now look it's in there and it's rotating fine so I'll have to do now is do the same on the other side so take out that old sticky stretchy belt put the new one in and there you go that one's working fine as well you can feel the motors not catching on anything everything's working well so I'll have to do put the machine back together now it's a little bit a bit that was a little bit concern about will I be able to get it back together can I get all those screws in the right places well everything sort of join up properly or will it be a disaster carefully manipulating it's old not to catch any wires in any parts of it you can see this part goes in very well I can see through the screw holes in there that everything's lined up properly so just about opening these tiny little screws in the face of that now the next part for the battery compartment on the top you can see how it joins up see where the LED is there there's two connectors there's two connectors on the battery compartment as well and those push against each other and that's how the power is transferred from the batteries to the device of course there's only five buttons on one side and four on the other so you can't put that in the wrong way around just carefully manipulating it so it goes over the top of everything doesn't catch at all and there's something incredibly satisfying about putting two things together and they just fit perfectly there's no gaps they marry up exactly anyway so put those long screws into the right hole that was the wrong one you can see cuz they wouldn't go down that's the right one so for the four screws at the top I put the little hinge back in the bottom that flew off before so I can attach the door to the hinge now with two screws on the bottom and then once I've got that on there the other thing I have to do is attach this mechanism on the side here with the remaining two screws I've done one screw hole already so the last screw going into the last screw hole see put it in there and there we go I've actually managed to repair a Worman something I wasn't too sure that I'd be able to do well kind of unfortunately I've spoken a little bit too soon it seems like it does have a couple of other issues that aren't to do with the belts let me put a tape in here demonstrate if I put it in deck B and press play I've got the light out coming out of this into some speakers nothing to be heard at all completely silent so if I take that tape out and put it into deck a and see if there's any sound coming out of that side down I think you've probably already guessed but when I put it into there arm press play nothing is coming out of there either however I figured out if I press record on deck B then sound will come out [Music] so it seems like something's a little bit screwy inside my theory is that the record mechanism is somehow continuously activated on deck B and therefore I can only hear deck a when I'm running that B because it's playing it back as a record monitor I did try W tape from decade to decade I think that I'd mentioned right at the beginning of the tape as being the feature that appealed to me back in 1985 as a way to copy spectrum games I've got a good feeling that the duplicated tape would not have loaded because it did sound pretty wobbly I think this thing needs new pinch rolls and craps a complete overhaul but I think I've also spent more than enough time on this particular deck already things didn't quite work out as planned for me on this one but I'm not as concerned as you might think despite all the time and effort put into this you see this was never going to be a Walkman I was going to listen to music on it's not a particularly good quality one the only reason I bought it is because it's a curiosity that only take two tape Walkman that Sony made now if I want to listen to tapes on the go I've got half a dozen different pieces of equipment I could do it on all the way up to the Walkman professional which one sounds a heck of a lot better than the sound of that device the thing is though that what this has taught me is about taking Walkman apart you see I was concerned before with all the little screws and things and how these things came apart whether I've ever there to put one back together and what it's taught me is yes I can take one apart I can replace adults and I can put it back together so now if one of my other half a dozen also Wortman get a sticky belt or something goes wrong inside I won't be scared though into taking them apart and try to fix it myself so overall it's definitely been a worthwhile exercise and I hope you've enjoyed this look at the take to take Worman and an attempted repair but that's it for the moment as always thanks for watching [Music] you [Music] you [Music] people [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Techmoan

Views: 604,021

Keywords: Techmoan, Walkman, Repair, WM-W800, Tape, Cassette, Tape to Tape, Twin, W800, Dual, Belt, replace, disassemble, assemble, opening up, inside, fix, twin tape, tm050417

Id: ntV8gUsbIsk

Length: 14min 17sec (857 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 05 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/SolidSpruceTop]

Kinda sad he didn't put more effort into making it work 100% but I still always enjoy his content

[u/Aeron_311]

Techmoan is a pretty neat guy