I get spare parts from abandoned photo equipment of the same type.
Obviously parts age differently, even if they are the same.
Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case with the dampers in the shutters of the Canon T90 and Minolta 9000 AF, they rot at the same time.
But otherwise you have a good chance of finding replacements, I think.
In the case of this LCD the repair steps involve adding a new part, that 'elastic conductor,' to replace the old heat-set conductive adhesive.
I've managed to get the LCD working again. I'm jumping the gun a bit with this post since I've not put the top back on yet, but i'm passing time as that epoxy cures.
First step was trying to find a zebra strip. I though I had some LCD modules somewhere but I couldn't find them... then I remembered i've got a bunch of junk cameras that have LCD panels in them.
The Minolta 7000i is a pretty lame camera and not currently particularly valuable. Plus i'm curious about how different it is to the 7000. There's always the risk a movie prop or some youtuber might make these worth a fortune to cosplayers some day though.
Getting inside of it was tricky since there's plastic tabs holding alot of the case on. I was convinced the grip part was separate and had to come off for most of it, but it turns out it's integral to the whole body. There's a secret secret hole the red arrow is pointing to that holds the top on, but I don't have a long and narrow enough screwdriver to reach it so the top just got ripped off. To remove the mirror box you need to pull the rubber grip off too, which is of course very brittle now.
The whole thing is quite baffling and awful, fully wrapped in soldered together PCBs that cover and obscure various screws. I'd say without a service manual there wouldn't be much hope of getting much done with this thing.
There's the aperture mechanism. It's nice that it's an easily removed module but not nice that you still have to take the mirror box out. But i'm not sure if these have the same failure issues.
An interesting feature is the film gate being moulded into the plastic body, doing a good job to hide any seam lines on the user visible side.
Anyways here's the thing I was after. I did look at the viewfinder LCD in the 7000i to see if that had an already sized zebra strip in it, but that was just more heat seal stuff.
I'd been pacing around thinking about clever and elaborate ways to cut a zebra strip but it turns out just a sharp scalpel goes right through it without issue. The donor LCD's glass edge was used as the cutting ruler. I used other parts from the camera to hold it in place and shim things up so the 'ruler' was gripping the rubber but not distorting it too much. The plastic diffuser there was just to keep the edge straight when lining things up, and moved out the way during the cut. I just estimated the cut thickness by eye at around 0.5mm. Also I made a second cut since the original edge was possibly a little deformed from years in contact with the LCD's traces.
And yeah that went back together and the segments are working fine. I'm fairly confident the zebra strip will maintain a good connection so I dolloped some epoxy around... and it aughta be cured enough for reassembly by now.
Edit: So much for 15 minute epoxy. It's JB Weld branded stuff. Hopefully it hasn't gone bad already. But it might just be because the dollops are so small. I'm happy to wait though, it's feeling like a real rigamarole by now and I don't really want to do it again.
