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09-02-2020, 07:29 AM   #16
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QuoteOriginally posted by Astro-Baby Quote
On the base of an XG-M with base towards you and the lens pointing up to the ceiling you should see left to right

Small Philips screw (its actually a JIS but most people would recognise a Philips style) immediately below it is the locating hole for a motor drive.
Large Crosshead - thats not a screw its the connector for the motor drive
Winder release button for rewinding (*amll black button)
Tripod bushing
Small brass button
Battery Chamber Cap
Group of 3 brass/gold electrical connectors for the motor drive and one locating hole.
Small Philips (another JIS)

Its only the two small Philips at the extreme edges that come off. That will release the base of the camera.

Once you are inside there is a large metal plate across the central position and underneath that lies most of the gear. You cant remove the plate as its attached to various connectors but you can release the screws and lift the plate slightly at one edge to get a peek inside. Be careful here because there is a small spring that anchors to the plate and it can fly off and get lost.

My memory is a bit hazy on the XG-M and I almost never take pictures while working as I find it distracting. Under the metal plate at almost the centre of the camera you will see a wheeled mechanism with a tab on it. Press the aperture actuator. lever a few times and you will see the position the small wheel with the tab should be - gently press the tab on the wheel clockwise or counter clockwise and it should suddenly snap back to position and close the actuator lever back down. You may need to tinker a bit. Dont force anything - just a gentle press with something like a cocktail stick should do the job.

If it doesn't work easily I would leave well alone - your more likely to do harm than fix anything. If you are not confident working with mechanical things I would alway advise people to leave well alone - thats not snobby its based on me buggering stuff up in my earlier days from not really knowing what I was doing.

XG-Ms and X series are prone to various ills - they were cheaply made to fight a price war at the time and by the time the war was in full progress most of the makers were putting quality on the backseat while they drove the car off a cliff in a race to the bottom. They were all doing it to a greater or lesser extent - despite all this the major players were innovating. The XG-Ms were among the last of the manual cameras before AF arrived.

I never used any Minolta gear back in the day but am now doing penance for that....the XG-Ms are quite sweet to shoot with, unfussy, easy to get on with but they do feel horribly plastic and cheaply made. With that said the focus screens are beautiful big and bright and its an undemanding camera to use and very easy to live with. I enjoyed using it for a few weeks as my happy snappy carry round.

I dont have one anymore as the busted one that was used for donor parts has now been gutted for spares stock (some of its parts helped restore two other cameras and a lens) and the rebuilt one, fully working and film tested has been sold for a tiny profit but it will have a loving owner who will put more film through it than I ever would. Any camera tech would most likely have declared it uneconomic I expect - it would certainly have been a chunk of cash for time and effort. But it was fun (kind of) to get it fixed and its nice knowing that someone on eBay has a fully working, tested out, reliable bit of kit thats been lovingly repaired (even though there were moments where I considered chucking it in the trash).


By the way - very early (pre-1985) X series almost never have capacitor issues. Before 85 Minolta used Tantalum bead capacitors which are durable. Post 85 they switched over to electrolytic caps which were cheaper to shave manufacturing costs down. XG-Ms always used electrolytic caps but the X500 and X700 used tantalum for the pre-85 models. With that said like any 50 year old camera they can suffer and for cameras made late on in the classic period the risks run higher as manufacturers were cutting costs and I suspect reducing the expected shutter counts before failure.
Thanks for the really comprehensive info!
(Since your last post I had online discovered that the cross-head feature, that I had thought was a screw, was in fact related to the motor drive.)

Unfortunately I don't think I am going to be able to proceed any further, because when I tried to loosen the two tiny JIS screws they just would not budge. I have a set of JIS screwdrivers but the ones I tried just jumped out of the screw-heads. Maybe I am just being stupid: my old eyes are not what they were.
It just seems such a pity not to be able to fix it if it's a fix that is within my competence. I shall try it again when I have summoned my courage.
As a plan B, and to maybe be able to use the aforementioned Rokkor lens, I am watching another XG-M that is for sale on the Shop Goodwill website. The store states that the meter, shutter and wind-on are working correctly so.....I shall see.
I am doing this with some reservations because my 35mm gear is all K-mount (Pentax and Chinon) so I think Gear Aquisiition Syndrome is driving my interest in the Minolta. That, however, is only part of the story. Back in the 1970s I use Minolta SRT 101s for a time. They were great cameras, heavy but rock solid. Maybe I should go for an SRT 101 body rather than an XG-M.

Thanks again for taking the trouble to advise me!


Last edited by Pentaxis; 09-02-2020 at 07:31 AM. Reason: Typo fixed
09-02-2020, 12:24 PM   #17
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I tried to find info on serial numbers so I could see if mine is an early production, since I do not have any issues with it. It cleaned up very nicely, and I replaced the seals and bumper. It has been film tested, with really old film that had not been stored correctly, so I figured any flaws in the picture was due to the old film.
09-02-2020, 04:21 PM   #18
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With an X700 I could maybe help, I havent seen enough XGMs to get a grip on serials and I have a nasty feeling from the three I have seen that maybe Minolta did the same as Olympus. Its nigh impossible to date an OM because Olympus bashed out all the plates with the serials on, piled them up in their warehouse and then just used them in no particular order when assembling so the serials are useless.

I suspect that may be true with the XGM as I have seen three, two had lower serials but their internal construction was different and construction was noticeable worse in the later serial. Ah ha I hear you say, thats typical as construction went on they found cheaper ways to do stuff but the third one with an even later serial number was noticeably better constructed with more metal parts. The earliest serial and the later serial had the same circuit boards but the middle one was different which is why I suspect maybe the serials are not reliable.
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