motor drive works, but was delayed

i have a motor drive 1 for my x-700 that has worked fine on this

camera for over a year, on over 50 rolls of film. in the past week,

i've noticed that it deploys a number of seconds after the shutter,

or sometimes not at all. the manual says this indicates low battery

power, so i replaced them... however, this still occurred on fresh,

unused and very new batteries with a date of 2010.

 

to see if this was the x-700 or the motor drive 1, i put my backup xg-

m on the drive, and, ugh: it worked fine, advancing quickly as it

should. i replaced the drive on the x-700, and after repeating the

remove/replace sequence twice, it *seems* to be working now. i'm

being a good boy and turning off both switches (drive and camera)

before i remove and remount it, but am curious if anyone else has had

this problem when you're low on juice. this is the first set of

batteries i've run through this.

 

thanks

Leif, Sounds like you may be the victim of dirty contacts.(on the bottom of your X-700). Clean them with something like a pencil eraser if you can or a cotton swab with alcohol. Sometimes they get contaminated just enough to give intermittent contact. If that's the case, it's good news as it's easy to remedy. Best, LM.