Recently got an old Emerson clock/radio working again by replacing a capacitor in it. This is one of their "Radio Shack catalog" radios of yesteryear, where it has overkill features you'll never use (seriously, who needs four alarms?) but it DOES make a nice digital clock, since it sets itself using the Atomic Clock signal.
So if anyone else has an old Emerson CKA1000 kicking around still (it's the silver one) and it starts resetting itself don't throw it away just yet. Mine would work until the house A/C kicked on... i guess the voltage drop was enough. But according to other posts it just keeps getting worse. The usual badcap syndrome right?
this guy nailed the problem here, nearly six years ago http://www.fixya.com/support/t144760...uously_flashes
To summarize replacing capacitor C554 inside fixes it. On my clock the dead cap was marked 1000uF 16v JACKCON. It looked fine, except all of the hot glue around that area of the board had turned black which was suspicious. I don't know if it was the capacitor itself, or if that area of the board just gets baked. I put in a random 2200uF 25v I had in my junk bin and it seems to be working... at least it hasn't reset for a day now, which is a massive improvement.
And wow, thankfully this capacitor is on the "top board" when you open the clock, so you can just snip it off and run some wires for your replacement cap. There are literally 4 boards sandwiched together inside of this thing (in a depth of 2 inches) with MANY soldered interconnects. It would be a nightmare to disassemble it completely. Or I should say, to reassemble it with the intention of it working again.
So if anyone else has an old Emerson CKA1000 kicking around still (it's the silver one) and it starts resetting itself don't throw it away just yet. Mine would work until the house A/C kicked on... i guess the voltage drop was enough. But according to other posts it just keeps getting worse. The usual badcap syndrome right?
this guy nailed the problem here, nearly six years ago http://www.fixya.com/support/t144760...uously_flashes
To summarize replacing capacitor C554 inside fixes it. On my clock the dead cap was marked 1000uF 16v JACKCON. It looked fine, except all of the hot glue around that area of the board had turned black which was suspicious. I don't know if it was the capacitor itself, or if that area of the board just gets baked. I put in a random 2200uF 25v I had in my junk bin and it seems to be working... at least it hasn't reset for a day now, which is a massive improvement.
And wow, thankfully this capacitor is on the "top board" when you open the clock, so you can just snip it off and run some wires for your replacement cap. There are literally 4 boards sandwiched together inside of this thing (in a depth of 2 inches) with MANY soldered interconnects. It would be a nightmare to disassemble it completely. Or I should say, to reassemble it with the intention of it working again.