Sony service manuals

[fzabkar]

I examined the structure of the URLs for Sony's service manuals and I believe I have found a pattern that may help us to locate free downloads, provided that the manual's part number is known. This part number is usually printed on the manual's cover page. That's the page that many spammy web sites show you in their preview PDFs.

For example, the part number for the VPCZ2 is 9-890-851-02. The "02" at the end is the version number and/or the "level" of the manual. Simply remove the hyphens and build a URL using the following template:



... where nnnnnnnnn is the part number.

You can try variations of the last digit for different versions and levels.

I don't know if the following coding is consistent, but it's worth experimenting with:

second last digit = level (1 = L3, 3 = L2)
last digit = version of manual

Examples:

VPCZ2 Series. SERVICE MANUAL. Ver 2-2011J. 9-890-851-02:



VPCZ1 Series. SERVICE MANUAL. Ver 6-2012B. 9-890-814-06:



SVS131 Series SERVICE MANUAL Ver 1-2013A 9-890-952-01:



Sony HDR-PJ260/PJ260E/PJ260V/PJ260VE/XR260E/XR260V Service Manual (Levels 2 and 3):
(L2)
(L3)
(non existent URL)




985226931 L2
985226911 L3

[keeney123]

Re: Sony service manuals

I examined the structure of the URLs for Sony's service manuals and I believe I have found a pattern that may help us to locate free downloads, provided that the manual's part number is known. This part number is usually printed on the manual's cover page. That's the page that many spammy web sites show you in their preview PDFs.

For example, the part number for the VPCZ2 is 9-890-851-02. The "02" at the end is the version number and/or the "level" of the manual. Simply remove the hyphens and build a URL using the following template:



... where nnnnnnnnn is the part number.

You can try variations of the last digit for different versions and levels.

I don't know if the following coding is consistent, but it's worth experimenting with:

second last digit = level (1 = L3, 3 = L2)
last digit = version of manual

Examples:

VPCZ2 Series. SERVICE MANUAL. Ver 2-2011J. 9-890-851-02:



VPCZ1 Series. SERVICE MANUAL. Ver 6-2012B. 9-890-814-06:



SVS131 Series SERVICE MANUAL Ver 1-2013A 9-890-952-01:



Sony HDR-PJ260/PJ260E/PJ260V/PJ260VE/XR260E/XR260V Service Manual (Levels 2 and 3):
(L2)
(L3)
(non existent URL)




985226931 L2
985226911 L3

I talk with the Vice president of Sony USA some time ago and he assured me it is not Sony's policy to withhold part numbers. He also said he would take care of this problem. I found that he did take care of this problem the next time I called Sony support Parts department. If you need a part number you should be able to call Sony's Support Parts Department and get the correct number for any of your devises.

[fzabkar]

Re: Sony service manuals

IME it is often quicker and easier to do things yourself rather than relying on the manufacturer's support.

Anyway, here is a worked example.

I wanted a service manual for a HDR-CX760V, so I asked Google:



The result was 8 hits, all spam. However, the "servicemanuals dot net" PDF had a preview of the front cover of the Level 2 service manual. On the cover was the part number, "983465634.pdf".

I then constructed the corresponding URL and downloaded the full manual from Sony's web site:

(Level 2)

Next I edited the last two digits and was rewarded with the Level 3 manual:

(Level 3 ?)

It appears that these parasites can be useful after all. :-)

[stj]

Re: Sony service manuals

sony are bastards,
i contacted them about some resistors in a crt monitor once and they insisted on only giving me the order code and not the actual details of the part.
i had to pay about €12 + post for 3 fucking 3w resistors because of that!

[fzabkar]

Re: Sony service manuals

Here is another example.

I was looking for a service manual for a D-EJ100. I found a preview page at nodevice dot com. The manual's part number was 9-961-981-05.

This time the URL was invalid. I then tried various permutations that were similar to other valid Sony URLs and eventually found one that worked.

(not valid)
(not valid)
(not valid)
(not valid)
(not valid)
(OK)