It has been working great since I fixed it about 9 months ago, but I got the "clock is broken" error over the weekend.

Sadness

I'll take it apart and check it out. I'm thinking it might be as simple as the connectors at the bottom because, after slightly touching them, it started freaking out in test mode (opts going on off).

I haven't heard people having to rebuild the female connector (because of cracked wires), but I'm wondering if that's my problem. Or if I need to reflow the connectors on the clock.

Thanks for your sympathies (and for the lubricant/grease suggest)

Great news! I spent some time debugging this problem and came to the conclusion the problem was the interconnect between the minute opto board and the hour opto board. Slight bending of the board would cause strange clock behavior.

I decided to remove the original interconnect all together. I desoldered both the male and female sides, cut seven ~2" pieces of wire, and directly soldered the wires onto each board. If ever needed, I can still "fold open" the two PCBs and work on them, but now the questionable interconnect has been removed.

And it's working great! I've been running the "fast clock" test for > 5 minutes with no stopping. Prior to this repair, even when the clock appeared to be working, the "fast clock" test would stop on its own after a minute or so.

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