Viewfinder dead

It's a very common problem which seems to eventually affect all A1's and A2's eventually. My sixth one failed yesterday.

The fault is a tiny crack on an internal flexible circuit board, the bad news is that there is no easy or lasting fix.

The best you can do is to undo the two small screws underneath the viewfinder and remove the lower cover. You'll see the flexible pcb immediately and the break occurs in one or both outermost electrical tracks below the blue or yellow tape in the lower r.h. corner. If you turn the camera on and gently manipulate the pcb you can often get it to work again, but to prevent it reoccurring too quickly you'll need to fix the viewfinder in the lowered position permanently. Unfortunately, a knock can just as easily stop it from working again and the damage does eventually progress to other electrical tracks.

The only proper fix is to replace the pcb, but it's no longer available and you have to dismantle the camera completely to do so and it's not an easy job. If you can find an old stock replacement pcb then you'll see that KM never resolved the issue: it's exactly the same as the old one and will fail in time. I found this out the hard and expensive way.