I have begun the assessment of The Optimus. Not much love for these out there but I have seen a few people taking the challenge. I have begun the laborious re-cap of the boards. Fortunately with this particular unit, the cap leakage has not severely corroded the boards. Indeed many of them still test as good. Getting rid of them anyway, but interesting to note.
More concerning is that it doesn’t exhibit a ‘sound issue’ what it does exhibit is a no-play issue. You hit play and it acts like it is end of tape and reverses. Then it thinks it’s playing but it’s not. You can his stop and it will switch back to stopped. FF/Reverse nothing. I do note the capstan is spinning. I have cursory looked at the belts and not seeing much of an issue. I mean they are there. Drawer opens and closes. If you are aggressive enough with it, you can get it to eat a tape.
Going to finish the recap and see if anything changes. If not, it gets interesting from there.
I am recapping one board at a time and then retesting just to see if something of interest shakes out. I assume DCC Museum has full schematics by now after talking with Daniel Staudacher but I haven’t seen them anywhere.