Help! Sister dropped my A70!

[ashtray13]

First time poster guys and i'm in need of some help. My sister dropped my A70 and she cracked the LCD inside. The LCD protector is fine, but the LCD is cracked. The camera still takes photos perfectly but I can't view anything on the LCD. Now canon wants to charge me 200 to fix it which I can't afford being a 17 year old teenager.

So my questions are:

1. Do you know roughly how much an LCD for a A70 costs from the parts department?

2. Is it hard to put the LCD in, I can solder and I have basic electricity knowledge, but i'm unsure of how hard it is.

3. How complicated is the inside of the A70?

[rothers]

Can't help with replacement LCD costs but just to put things into perspective you can purchase a complete new A70 for under £200 nowadays.

Worth checking out before you spent money on repairs.

[stopbath]

Replaceing the LCD is not for the fient of heart. You can easily destroy the workings of the entire camera (static electricity, too much heat during solder...)

To find the cost of the LCD, contact the parts department of Canon.
Also see if they can send you the exploded view of the parts.

It is VERY complicated inside the A70. Luckily most of the guts need not be monkeyed with...

I hope your sister at least offered to help with the cost of repair.

[Elbee19]

I don't have a clue as to what a new LCD cost nor do I know the difficulty of a self repair. However I can only imagine the intricacies of the inner workings of the camera that the risk of buying a new LCD only to ruin the camer completely is, at least for me, an unnecessary risk. Especially with the prices of the A70 dropping what seems like almost daily, you might be better off just springing for a new one. They are consistenly under $200 now.

Just my $.02! :D

[Drbeagle]

I had friend at school drop my A70 and jam the lens mechinism. I was able to fix that (I think) but fried the electrical system in the process. Fortunately for you, the LCD screen is much easier to get to than the lens/ccd unit. I actually had to remove my LCD to get to that lens.

Here's two things I can suggest:

Put electrical tape over the contacts on the flash capacitor once you open the case. (I thought I discharged mine, but I'm guessing I didn't get it completely discharged.)

Take precautions with static electricity. Wear a wrist strap or something (only after you've completely discharged and taped over the flash cap. you don't want that grounding through you)


If you still need a screen I have one from my dead camera that I could sell to you for fairly cheap. It should be working unless I fried that too, lol.

I can send you a link to a Part Catalog that has exploded view diagrams for all the pieces in the camera. It will be enough to let you take it apart and put it back together. Just besure to number the screws as you take them out. The size differences are too small to really see. Its much better to put them in something like an ice tray while you put them out (one 'cube' for each number screw.)

Finally, if you've decided to just buy a new camera (it gets you a whole year of warranty, i replaced mine with a new one for around 140 after gift cards from Amazon, email me if you want details) let me know and I'd be interested in the buying the broken one from you.

PM me or email me. Drbeagle@aol.nospam.com or AIM: Drbeagle

Hope this helps,
David

[RoB_m]

hope you're not just going to replace the thing yourself. i'd be very very very very very veyr very angry wit my sister and i would press charges if she didn't replace it for you :] even if she's younger than you ahah