During one of my many random searches on auction websites I found something that I wasn’t looking for, but still wanted: a Sony Walkman WM-EX312, almost the exact model I had as a teenager. When I got my hands on it and started fiddling around with it, it almost instantly stopped working. Time for a fix.
The first few hours were magical. I have two cassette tapes that I kept from my childhood. One is a tape my dad made and it’s filled with singles from the 60’s and 70’s. The other tape has my baby sounds on it, my first laughs, my first words. Both pretty special.
When the Walkman stopped playing I instantly figured it had to be a mechanical fault, not an electrical fault. The obvious culprit was a snapped drive belt, a well known fault in these old machines. You can find drive belts on eBay for a lot of old portable cassette players, including mine.
What I also love about electronics from the 90’s, the manual contains detailed instructions on how to disassemble the unit. Those days are long game sadly.
So lets fix this Sony Walkman WM-EX312.
NOTE: I made a public Youtube-playlist of the singles my dad put on the tape.
