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Author Message   M_currie Tinkerer Username: M_currie Post Number: 141 Registered: 07-2006 Rating: N/A Votes: 0 Posted on Thursday, October 23, 2008 - 07:25 pm:    I've never had the good fortune to find a Minolta 16 cassette, but I have an original 16 here in my hand. When you take the cover off to load the film you can open the film door, and use the slide to advance and cock. It appears that when you open the slide, there is no movement, and when you close it again, it advances the takeup spool clockwise. The base of the spool rotates in both directions, but the hub does not. My first question would be to see if it is actually moving the spool in both directions. If it is, see if the spool is jammed or its ratcheting mechanism inoperative. It should be possible to rotate it clockwise by hand, and it should lock when you try to rotate it CCW. If it's gunked up with age, perhaps you can just give it some exercise and get it loosened up, or perhaps try a drop or two of Ronsonol to get the clutch clutching. I'm guessing that this is not a very complicated mechanism, since the post in the center of the spool, with the screw head, is stationary. I think if you carefully unscrewed that screw, you'd reveal a stack of parts constituting some kind of clutch, and if you get that clutch working properly, you'll be back in business. However, despite my inability to use this camera until or unless I find a cassette, I confess I'm reluctant to experiment on this one, so I'm afraid you'll have to find out for yourself the extent of the "sproing factor" involved if you take that screw out!