The Icom 736 is not a particularly well known transceiver. I had not heard of it before acquiring an Icom PW-1 amplifier where it was found that the 736 is required to complete the testing of the PW-1 tuner. For that reason, it came on the list of rigs to acquire. Recently, a 736 parts unit was found for a very good price. This is it’s story. The knobs have been taken off for cleaning. An attempt to turn it on resulted in no activity at all.
Under the covers, it was obvious, others have worked on it before. A metal shield that goes over the switching power supply is missing. The internal power connector to the front panel on/off switch had been disconnected. Connecting it up, it was verified that the switching power supply was working fine. About 29 VDC for the finals and 13.8 VDC to the rest of the rig. One front panel LED for ANT1 came on but the LCD backlight and the meter light did not come on. The meter light was found missing. A connector to the power transistor ( 2SB1015) which supplied power to to the LCD backlight was found to have been reversed. Correcting the connection to that transistor brought the LCD backlight on but no display. There are a number of other regulators that create -5 VDC, +5 VDC, +8 VDC. In some cases there is more than one regulator for a voltage like the +5 VDC. So far it looks like all those regulators are working. None of the front panel buttons other than the power switch work at this time. The assembly with the two potentiometers just to the right of the microphone connector was found to be loose as were two ribbon cables from the logic board under the front panel. The logic board has the LCD display drivers and the CPU so that may be the focus of attention at the moment.
Any inputs about the missing parts or experience with the 736 are welcome.
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