Faulty YS-60

I recently bought some YS-60 strobes on ebay. The idea is to use it with the digital adapter from heinrichsweikamp. This will be my first strobes, so i thought that this was a relatively cheap way to start.

The first one i got looks very well maintained. A little bit of corrosion on one battery lid. But i tested it and it worked fine. The second one i got looked a lot worse. Lots of corrosion on the metal bits. And also the battery compartment had it share of corrosion.

When i tested the second strobe, the red light did come on. But it did not flash at all. At close inspection the inside of the battery compartment looks slightly different. I have attached a picture (of the working strobe).The working one seems to have a metal bit in the hole. But the faulty one has not. I wonder if the strobe got flooded.

Does anybody still have these old puppies and has any ideas on this?

Update: after some more testing it seems that there is a communication problem. The TTL light never lights up on the faulty one.

Have you tried to "manually" trigger the strobe without a camera? It could be that the strobe will not fire.

This link http://www.camerasunderwater.co.uk/articles/engineering/ttl-flash provides pinouts for common connectors - along with a decent explanation of several wire protocols.

Your strobe should have either the Sea & Sea Duo flash interface (YS-60TTL/S) or Nikonos (YS-60TTL/N) interface. Regardless, all you have to do is short the X pin to the Gnd pin and the strobe will fire. No camera or fancy TTL adapter required for this test. It also does not matter which mode the strobe is in.

I use an unfolded paper clip (well 2 of them - I stick 1 paper clip into each pin socket and then touch the paper clips together). This is totaly safe as the voltage on the connector is less than 5 volts.

If you can not manually fire the strobe, then it is officially a paper weight and/or spare parts for your working strobe.

P.S. The TTL light is simply a "post fire" diagnostic. I would not worry about that until after you have determined taht the strobe will fire. A Green TTL light simply means that the strobe did not perform a full dump.

Thanks for the suggestion. It seems the strobe is defective. I will try to get my money back through paypal.