Sony Discman, Well, The D-FJ787

Yeah I own one of those sad pieces of crap ever devised by Sony.

It comes with a remote tuner with FM capabilities. What's the problem with it now? Well, in a nutshell:

- Pressing the buttons on the remote gives no response.
- Sometimes when there is a response, the RADIO button starts to playback my CD.
- Sometimes when there is a response, the CD button starts to playback my RADIO.
- Sometimes when there is a response, pressing the STOP button doesn't stop playback nor the radio.

So, with the warranty over, and scared off by Sony's $40 service charge + $15 cleaning fees (I bought this for $259), I went to dismantle the remote for the Sony CD Walkman D-FJ787...

Here's a picture of the front of the remote:

Opening up the inside of the remote, reveals a huge piece of copper film that covers nearly 90% of the PCB.

Closer inspection reveals that this copper film is used to connect some buttons across and over the PCB, without the need for wires and/or circuits on the PCB.

Given that the copper film is so huge, it seems that little thought was given to the design of the circuitry lay out. Mind you, I am only a typical layman with no knowledge of circuity design. But this, this is just so wrong...

Here's another picture of the second part of the remote. Wait... SECOND PART? Yes! It's a second piece, connected via the white connector to the first part you see in the picture above.

Again, it doesn't take a genius to comprehend that using a PCB-PCB connector gives a window of opportunity for the connector to become loose in the long run, leading to inherent problems.

This is again obviously a design fault.

Now look closely at this picture of the back of the second part of the remote, and compare it with the previous picture (the front of the second part). See that bit of shiny reflection in the picture?

Yes, you are correct, no prizes given, Sorry. That IS a piece of plastic that is wrapped around the WHOLE piece of the remote.

You: "What is that plastic for?"

Me: "I have no idea.... wait.. hmm... OH! It seems like the plastic wrapping is there to prevent the second part of the remote from shorting with the first part of the remote! Remember? The SUPER BIG piece of copper film?"

Again, another obvious design fault.

And here is a picture of the remote with its cover off, showing how the remote looks like when pieced together:


Upon closer inspection of the remote, I see a sneakily familiar logo on the PCB:

Yes... yes... that looks like the Wearnes Logo!

If you didn't know, Wearnes made CD-ROM optical drives for the PC market about 10 years ago. Their drives weren't the best out there, and in fact, they were the best in the worst rankings.

I had thought they went bust after they disappeared from the optical drives markey all of a sudden without reason. But I wasn't surprised when they did the Houdini act.

Now they've made their appearance again, and in a Sony product.

That explains it all. No more Sony for me, and never Wearnes.

Sony D-FJ787. Damned-Fucked-up Job Number 787.