Sony clock radio buttons not working

[tippytappy]

Hello everyone. I have a Sony clock radio, model XDR-DS21BT with a strange problem. The display works and I can play music through it via bluetooth with a phone that was already set up. But none of the buttons work (and there's lots of them on this model). Volume, function etc. they do nothing. I've tried Sony support but they just sent me the manual. I tried Quora but the answers I got haven't worked. If it was totally dead I'd accept that but since it's alive in some respects I'd like to try to get the buttons working so it's more useful.

Any advice you can offer would be great appreciated.

[madires]

Do you have any experience with repairing electronics? Which tools do you have (DMM, etc)?

[xrunner]

Hello everyone. I have a Sony clock radio, model XDR-DS21BT with a strange problem. The display works and I can play music through it via bluetooth with a phone that was already set up. But none of the buttons work (and there's lots of them on this model). Volume, function etc. they do nothing. I've tried Sony support but they just sent me the manual. I tried Quora but the answers I got haven't worked.

Sony ain't going to help you with this. 

If you really mean none of the buttons are working at all (not intermittent, i.e dirty), but the main function (radio) is working, I'd say it could be a loose ribbon cable. Some of these devices have a main ribbon cable that will have a fan-out along the way to serve the top and other side buttons of the device on their own little PCB. If the cable is loose at the main PCB then the buttons won't work. If you can open it you can check it out, but it's up to your skills to do so.

[tippytappy]

Hi, thanks for replying. I have no electronics repair experience or specialist tools unfortunately. I'm willing to take it apart (I've already tried), blow dust out, look for obvious stuff etc. And I'm willing to follow instructions. But I'm clueless by myself.

[tippytappy]

Hi xrunner, thanks for the suggestion. I'll try that. I had the cover off recently but didn't do the whole way of disassembling the innards because I was hoping there was some 'magic' fix; hold down x+y button while switching off+on or the like, to reset something. Seems there isn't so I'll look for a mechanical issue.

[madires]

And please post some pictures! Maybe we can spot anything obvious.