So I figured it would be worth a shot to see if anyone knows what is up with my Coolscan, and if/how/what to fix (it).
A while back, I, on a bit of a whim, bought a broken Coolscan LS-4000ED. It was cheap enough that I thought it'd be worth the risk, and from the way the seller described the issues I just assumed he meant the image had lines in it due to the mirror being dirty. He sold it with an SA-21 roll film adapter that was "broken". It had some broken plastic on the corner as shown in the advertisement pictures. With that, I figured as long as I keep it in a sealed plastic tub, it shouldn't get too dusty inside, so it'd be fine.
Once I got the bundle, the scanner would fail at the POST (Power On Self Test), really early on with the SA-21 adapter connected, before it would flash the backlight in RGB colors to check if it was properly working, as the POST should do. The POST would succeed without the adapter, but the adapter wouldn't be detected if I plugged it in afterwards. I found out the seller meant the SA-21 didn't work, but he was rather vague on if he tested it with other equipment or just this scanner, which I still do not know.
After a while, I got an MA-21 slide adapter for slides. Now, I currently suck at shooting slide, and to double down on that, the first time I went out shooting it, I relied on the lightmeter in the camera which turned out to be way too irreliable and my shots for the most part ended up overblown and horrid. Oh well, I'm a n00b, so I guess I'll just have to practice a bit more with the more forgiving negative film, which so far is going decent.
Anyways, I took one of the rather terrible slides, and tried it out. The scanner now did turn on, and Nikon Scan 4 on the PowerMac (I collect older Macs, which also means I have period correct hardware to test it with) said it was ready to go. I had already cleaned the mirror at this point, so I assumed we should get a fairly good image.
Again, I shouldn't have assumed the seller was making sense, as with lines in the image, he meant black lines. And actually, most of the scanned image being pitch black. One section of the image would scan properly each and everytime, but the rest would be pitch black with occassional lines of either the image, or random colors. I have just taken two samples, showing that the patch of film it scans fine (again, the slide does look that terrible in real life) is as it should, but the rest is just unusable. The first has no Digital ICE, the second does. This shows that on the patch of film that does scan right, DICE does make a difference.
This puzzles me. At first, when it didn't POST with the SA-21, I thought that maybe the power supply was going bad. After all, the SA-21 has motors and circuitry that pull extra power that the PSU, in all of its failing health, would fail to supply, which made sense given it would succeed the POST without the adapter. However, the randomness of the artifacting and the fact that one specific patch of film always seems to scan fine, don't really add up. Does the scanner consume less power when it's scanning that specific spot? Is there a bad connection somewhere that somehow fixes itself only in that specific spot?
That's why I'm hoping someone might have had this, or something similar, happen to their Coolscan, and knows what went wrong with it and how it was/could be fixed. I have basic soldering skills, and am willing to give it a shot as I have nothing to lose. I'm getting a hot air soldering station soon as well, for my other vintage computer hobby, which I could use to do SMD soldering, should a still-obtainable component on the motherboard have failed, given that uses SMD components compared to the through-hole components on the power supply board. Any ideas or tips are greatly appreciated.
A while back, I, on a bit of a whim, bought a broken Coolscan LS-4000ED. It was cheap enough that I thought it'd be worth the risk, and from the way the seller described the issues I just assumed he meant the image had lines in it due to the mirror being dirty. He sold it with an SA-21 roll film adapter that was "broken". It had some broken plastic on the corner as shown in the advertisement pictures. With that, I figured as long as I keep it in a sealed plastic tub, it shouldn't get too dusty inside, so it'd be fine.
Once I got the bundle, the scanner would fail at the POST (Power On Self Test), really early on with the SA-21 adapter connected, before it would flash the backlight in RGB colors to check if it was properly working, as the POST should do. The POST would succeed without the adapter, but the adapter wouldn't be detected if I plugged it in afterwards. I found out the seller meant the SA-21 didn't work, but he was rather vague on if he tested it with other equipment or just this scanner, which I still do not know.
After a while, I got an MA-21 slide adapter for slides. Now, I currently suck at shooting slide, and to double down on that, the first time I went out shooting it, I relied on the lightmeter in the camera which turned out to be way too irreliable and my shots for the most part ended up overblown and horrid. Oh well, I'm a n00b, so I guess I'll just have to practice a bit more with the more forgiving negative film, which so far is going decent.
Anyways, I took one of the rather terrible slides, and tried it out. The scanner now did turn on, and Nikon Scan 4 on the PowerMac (I collect older Macs, which also means I have period correct hardware to test it with) said it was ready to go. I had already cleaned the mirror at this point, so I assumed we should get a fairly good image.
Again, I shouldn't have assumed the seller was making sense, as with lines in the image, he meant black lines. And actually, most of the scanned image being pitch black. One section of the image would scan properly each and everytime, but the rest would be pitch black with occassional lines of either the image, or random colors. I have just taken two samples, showing that the patch of film it scans fine (again, the slide does look that terrible in real life) is as it should, but the rest is just unusable. The first has no Digital ICE, the second does. This shows that on the patch of film that does scan right, DICE does make a difference.
This puzzles me. At first, when it didn't POST with the SA-21, I thought that maybe the power supply was going bad. After all, the SA-21 has motors and circuitry that pull extra power that the PSU, in all of its failing health, would fail to supply, which made sense given it would succeed the POST without the adapter. However, the randomness of the artifacting and the fact that one specific patch of film always seems to scan fine, don't really add up. Does the scanner consume less power when it's scanning that specific spot? Is there a bad connection somewhere that somehow fixes itself only in that specific spot?
That's why I'm hoping someone might have had this, or something similar, happen to their Coolscan, and knows what went wrong with it and how it was/could be fixed. I have basic soldering skills, and am willing to give it a shot as I have nothing to lose. I'm getting a hot air soldering station soon as well, for my other vintage computer hobby, which I could use to do SMD soldering, should a still-obtainable component on the motherboard have failed, given that uses SMD components compared to the through-hole components on the power supply board. Any ideas or tips are greatly appreciated.