DAT: Sony PCM-R300 info?

[Stephen A]

This is my first post, so please excuse any errors in procedure, etc. Finding this site was truly incredible, what a treasure and so great to find people with real knowledge and experience (all too often a rare thing these days).
I searched the forums before posting but couldn't find relevant info (but I have missed it) so am going ahead with post. I just bought a used DAT machine: Sony PCM-R300. Not a great model I know but it was in excellent condition & I checked it all out, worked fine. A big attraction was the digital i/o, both coaxial & optical (optical was important because I'm transferring from dat to my mac via optical in). Anyway, I got home, set up, loaded a tape & all was well. I found my track, previewed it & it was fine. I went back to beginning of track to begin, pushed play but it seemed to jam. I tried a couple times then ejected & found it had eaten the tape, not bad, maybe about 3 or 4 inches & it came out without too much trouble. Well, I got another tape & tried to play... now it was a whole different thing. It will not read the track numbers & when I push play I get sound but very garbled, a loud nasty buzz and it will run forward rapidly, slow down, fast again, almost stop and all the time the sound is garbled and with loud noise. Well, I don't know if I have described this very well but will gladly do anything I can to provide details.
I'm just trying to find out if it's something that can be fixed, would it cost more than is reasonable for this machine, etc. Of course I would hope to fix myself but doubt it's possible (I'm mostly a musician but have some experience with electronics & ability to a certain level). Also, I can't find anyone who does DAT repair in Nashville.
Excuse the long post. I greatly appreciate any help! thanks, Stephen

[Zero Cool]

these things are junk! sorry for being so frank but the transports on these things are just crap! They had a solid 90% failure rate. the transport metal parts are so soft, they bend easy and the whole door loading mech falls apart. not a good deck by any means. seriously!

an older Panasonic SV-3700/3800 would be a much more solid stable deck.

check out www.tangible-technology.com