Nikon Woe Gone

The Nikon medium format scanner arrived, and has gone.

It was dead on arrival. That’s the risk you take with secondhand equipment but luckily the vendor was one of the decent people on eBay and we were able to resolve the issue very quickly. But that’s not what I wanted to say. While it was here I contacted a Nikon authorised repair shop and asked for a ballpark figure for fixing it - this is the story.

The unit powered on and went through its POST (power on self test). Green slow flashing lights to begin then a short series of rapid green flashes before returning to solid green. I have been told by the Nikon repair man that any pulse of rapid green flashing during POST indicates a fault. Flashing at the end indicates logic board issues.

My computers could tell a Nikon Coolscan 8000 was attached but nothing could be done to bring it to life.

The Coolscan 8000 has a main computer board holding its logic and that was most likely the cause of the failure. To replace that would cost some £350, plus, £100 labour plus shipping / transport there and back. Oh, and don’t forget VAT now back up to 17.5%. So the repair bill could easily be over £500. That’s not far short of what these units sell for on eBay anyway. Compare that with the cost of a comparable top-flight Epson and draw your own conclusion, I did.