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NEC TG-16/TE/TurboDuo => TG-16/TE/TurboDuo Sales & Trades => Topic started by: Keith Courage on August 25, 2011, 04:53:24 AM
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Okay, guys, I finally got my shipment of gears in the mail. Just so you know these gears are not direct OEM replacements. The gears I have are to change the gear setup slightly to make it a 2 gear solution instead of 3 gears. So there is more work to be done besides just replacing one gear. The downfall of the two gear solution is that the drive is a bit noisier. However, on the plus side the load times for games are cut almost in half :) I am charging $12 for these gears since I have to drill out the holes on them to the correct size which requires some patience. If you go too fast the hole gets crooked rendering the gear useless. I test out every gear to make sure it is nice and straight before shipping.
Pics of another thread on here will be used to explain some of this since I don't currently have a drive apart that I can take pictures of. I will update with current pics of everything once I perform this repair myself again in the future.
I am going to start my write up on this as if everyone here already knows how to take their drive apart and disconnect the ribbon cables for the CD lens. That part is found in this write up https://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=7193.0
1. First you have to get the motherboard moved out of the way so you can see the lens drive assembly. Once at that point you will want to unscrew the 3 screws(circled in red) holding down the lens assembly and very carefully lift the assembly up. Do not lift too far cause there will still be wires attached to it.
(http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/6201/pic12ro.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/713/pic12ro.jpg/)
2. Now that you have the lens assembly up in the air you are going to have to remove the middle Metal shaft for the old broken middle gear(cirlced in red). You do this by using a pair of small pliers and pull out while twisting it back and forth. The metal shaft I speak of is the one that is stationary and doesn't spin.
(https://s29.postimg.cc/rhwlevar7/CIMG7508.jpg)
3. Remove the small metal part below the lens motor(circled in red). This is to make enough room for our new gear to fit. You do this by removing the one Phillips screw that is holding it on. After that part is off put the screw back in so your lens motor is still held on well.
(https://s4.postimg.cc/acwa02s61/CIMG7508.jpg)
4. Remove the old gear from the lens motor by just pulling it off. It may be on there pretty good so use a small flat head screw driver to push it off if you have to. Now push on the new gear until the teeth line up nicely. The new gear will take a bit of force to push it on. If you push it on too far use a flat head screw driver to pry it back off again.
(http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/825/cimg6164.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/691/cimg6164.jpg/)
5.(optional and usually not needed)If the gear seems like it is too far away from the main spindle you might have to flip over the lens motor. Not sure why if it's due to the mounting or if the center spindle on the motor isn't perfectly straight but I'd say about %10 of CD drives have to have the lens motor flipped over for the gear to line up correctly.
6. You must change the polarity on the lens motor itself. To do this you start by pulling the white connector end for it off of the motherboard(circled in red). It is the cable with a blue and pink wire. Once you have the cable disconnected from the board you use a very small flat head to hold the plastic clips away on the white connector end. With the plastic clips held out you can pull out the two wires. Now that the wires are removed just put them back in the opposite direction. The wires should clip back in. Alternatively you could de-solder and then re-solder the wires in reverse on the motor itself. When you have it correct the wires will be opposite of the wires in the picture here. So blue on the right and pink on the left instead.
(https://s10.postimg.cc/9gtmy407p/pic_09.jpg)
7. re-assemble your drive by putting the lens assembly back and re-attaching your lens ribbon cables. Put the bottom cover back on your drive but do not screw the bottom panel back on yet as you might need to remove it to do some adjustments.
8. Your drive should now be usable but there may be some fine tuning to be done. Most likely you won't have to do this next step but 10% of the time the drive will need the spindle speed potentiometer adjusted a little to make up for the slightly different gear size(circled in red). The best way to test this is to use an audio CD with lots of tracks on it. Hit the play button on your CD drive and listen to the first couple tracks and see if they work fine. Then try playing the very last tracks on the CD and see if they also work fine. If not then you will have to adjust the speed slightly one way or the other. The last tracks on a CD might skip a little until you get it right. I use YS 1&2 to test this out since it has the most audio tracks of any game I can think of. This part is what can take a quite a bit of time to get it just right.
(https://s11.postimg.cc/u4meo569r/pic_06.jpg)
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Two words... :dance: :clap:
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Don't suppose you want to share info on how we can do it ourselves cheaper?
For instance where does the gear you're using come from, how many teeth, O.D., what size is the hole we need to drill the gear out to, etc.
I just can't justify spending $15 on ONE gear.
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I approve :)
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I am sorry to say but the gears are close to $10 each if you buy them one at a time and not in bulk. The said gear comes in a package of about 10 other different gears(not usable) which is why it is $10. I have not been able to find the gear on it's own to make things cheaper. Also, the drill bits are on ebay which is the cheapest I can find for $2.64 a piece with the shipping so you are almost at $15 anyways. The drill bit is a micro bit size 54. You cannot get the drill bits in a hardware store. I never bothered measuring the gear before. I suppose I can try to measure it. I just randomly ordered a bunch of gears from places until I found the right one. It took me quite a bit of trial and error till I found the right match.
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$15 is a very fair price for replacement gears. This is a known fix for dirt cheap.
Thanks kieth for offering these!
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that ends up a bit cheaper than my pulleys, and i dont know how it compares to chops gears.
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$15 is an excellent price for this. I priced a bulk custom-made gear set for the CD drive, the best price I could get was $18 in bulk of 500 pieces. Throw in package/shipping, and I would have charged at least $25 just to break even. I cannot see any reason why anyone would not pay $15 and do the fix yourself. I have done a number of gear replacements on these drives, and the effort is minimal.
The other option was to do as Steve did,.. buy a "compilation" set of gears, find which one gear in which package of many gears would actually be usable, and proceed to buy multiples of that package. (And gain lot's of excess gears in the process)
Good job, Steve!!
Charlie
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Awesome! $15 is more than fair.
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Bravo :clap: :clap:
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Don't suppose you want to share info on how we can do it ourselves cheaper?
For instance where does the gear you're using come from, how many teeth, O.D., what size is the hole we need to drill the gear out to, etc.
I just can't justify spending $15 on ONE gear.
Obviously you haven't been tracking this problem as long as some other people here. Its worth at least four times that since it turns a totally useless paperweight back into a usable drive.
I will buy one of these for my spare (broken) drive but I'm not to excited about replacing it right away. The idea of "adjustment" of a drive makes me sick to my stomach. I'm trying to tweak a FC disc drive right now and its basically torture.
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Don't suppose you want to share info on how we can do it ourselves cheaper?
For instance where does the gear you're using come from, how many teeth, O.D., what size is the hole we need to drill the gear out to, etc.
I just can't justify spending $15 on ONE gear.
Obviously you haven't been tracking this problem as long as some other people here. Its worth at least four times that since it turns a totally useless paperweight back into a usable drive.
Obviously not true, April of 2008 I posted a 'how to' on diagnosing and fixing the return to center limit switch in the tgcd.
That was right after forum members really started investigating this gear issue.
To me its too much, but that may have a lot to do with how many units I need to fix, 15+.
If I only had one or two then it may not seem that excessive...
If we knew what this gear's OD and tooth count were, we could possibly order it in bulk for cheap.
Should be cheaper since its not an obscure reduction gear, just a simple spur gear.
Also, thought i'd much rather have a drop in replacement, a gear on gear solution interests me more than any belt type fix. That's a whole other set of problems.
Also, the drill bits are on ebay which is the cheapest I can find for $2.64 a piece with the shipping so you are almost at $15 anyways. The drill bit is a micro bit size 54. You cannot get the drill bits in a hardware store.
Grainger (http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/WESTWARD-Jobber-Drill-4UM25?Pid=search)has them for $1.10 a piece.
there may be some fine tuning to be done. 75% of the time drives will need the spindle speed potentiometer adjusted a little to make up for the slightly different gear size(circled in red).
I was wondering, if the motor and worm gear spindles are the same diam. you could put your new big gear on the worm gear shaft and the smaller gear off the worm onto the motor shaft and maybe it would run a little slower and maybe less noise or possibly less adjustment???
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To me its too much, but that may have a lot to do with how many units I need to fix, 15+.
If I only had one or two then it may not seem that excessive...
If we knew what this gear's OD and tooth count were, we could possibly order it in bulk for cheap.
Should be cheaper since its not an obscure reduction gear, just a simple spur gear.
For someone wanting to fix their ONE CD unit for personal gaming use, $15 is fantastic as it saves someone from having to spend $70 to $90 for a working CDROM. For someone with 15+ units... $15 each is high because what else would someone do with 15+ units but sell them once they were working? Every bit of cost put into each drive makes them less profitable.
Also, thought i'd much rather have a drop in replacement, a gear on gear solution interests me more than any belt type fix. That's a whole other set of problems.
Not really... infact, the belt drive has a few things that all these substitute gear solutions dont have. First of all you dont need to reverse the motor, secondly its silent. I can understand that belts wear out, but lets be honest, how long do they typically last? And say it does wear out... they're less than a $1 and might take you 10 minutes to replace.
I was wondering, if the motor and worm gear spindles are the same diam. you could put your new big gear on the worm gear shaft and the smaller gear off the worm onto the motor shaft and maybe it would run a little slower and maybe less noise or possibly less adjustment???
The worm gear and motor have vastly different diameters. The worm gear is basically a 1/8" press fit while the motor is MUCH smaller.
In justification of the price, I'll throw out a comparison....
The region mod chips I had made up... I've been asking $18 each shipped for them which is about what I've seen similar region mod chips sell for in the past. Each chip has to be soldered, packaged, labeled and shipped. I go even further and I test all the connections with a meter to make sure there are no missed / poor solder connections. The cost of the parts is around $3 each, but when you add in the cost of supplies, shipping mailers, shipping, time / effort to package / mail them.... the profit is under $10 each. Not to mention I had put in about $500 up front to make them in the first place. Before that, there was a lot of time spent developing the design / method of the chip. So the $8 or $9 profit I make pays me for the time / effort I put into making / shipping them, AND for the development time before the chips were made. Additionally... when one fails, I'll back it up and replace any defective ones for free. Inevitably it will happen and I have to plan for that eventuality.
Similarly, Keith Courage had to locate gears that worked pretty much by trial and error. I've tried too, and believe me its frustrating to have 50 or so gears that you've bought and paid for that dont work! So in the end, even if Keith is making $10 profit on each gear... good for him. That's well on par with the industry for this sort of repair part. Like me he has to spend time drilling / preparing / checking the gears and then packaging and shipping them.
end rant :P
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very nice chris,excellant tutorial.
come on over to the shoutbox were we techys talk for hours on end of the obscure technologies of mankinds past and how to restore them :D
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To me its too much, but that may have a lot to do with how many units I need to fix, 15+.
If I only had one or two then it may not seem that excessive...
If we knew what this gear's OD and tooth count were, we could possibly order it in bulk for cheap.
Should be cheaper since its not an obscure reduction gear, just a simple spur gear.
For someone wanting to fix their ONE CD unit for personal gaming use, $15 is fantastic as it saves someone from having to spend $70 to $90 for a working CDROM. For someone with 15+ units... $15 each is high because what else would someone do with 15+ units but sell them once they were working? Every bit of cost put into each drive makes them less profitable.
Yes, that's what i'm doing, buy em, fix/mod em, resell em, hope for some profit.
Also, thought i'd much rather have a drop in replacement, a gear on gear solution interests me more than any belt type fix. That's a whole other set of problems.
Not really... infact, the belt drive has a few things that all these substitute gear solutions dont have. First of all you dont need to reverse the motor, secondly its silent. I can understand that belts wear out, but lets be honest, how long do they typically last? And say it does wear out... they're less than a $1 and might take you 10 minutes to replace.
Yes, but a drop in would take less time and effort to fix each unit and work as intended. My other concern about the belt is it would slip when the sled reaches either end and thats not how it was made to work. It may work perfect and I do like the idea of being a silent operation, but would still rather have an original replacement.
I was wondering, if the motor and worm gear spindles are the same diam. you could put your new big gear on the worm gear shaft and the smaller gear off the worm onto the motor shaft and maybe it would run a little slower and maybe less noise or possibly less adjustment???
The worm gear and motor have vastly different diameters. The worm gear is basically a 1/8" press fit while the motor is MUCH smaller.
I see, been too long since i've had one open and couldn't tell from the pics, too bad...
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the belt slippage is not an issue as its not a syncro motor, and extends motor and driver IC life.
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shouldnt this be in the sale thread? :P
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This is some great info. Thanks for the post.
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I'm a little late to the party, but I wanted to say thanks for finally sharing your information with the community. Many will benefit from this.
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Just letting everyone here know that I just got some more gears in. I was also able to find a slightly cheaper place to order them from so $12 is now the cost for a gear.
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OK. I will order one from you later this weekend.
By isolating and contributing this fix to the community and sharing the knowledge for all to see you have done everyone here a service and I think you for that.
I'm glad you've decided to stick around, Keith. You're cool in my book.
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Good work Keith - great to see a solution to this problem.
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shoutbox on the backup pcefx site?
very nice chris,excellant tutorial.
come on over to the shoutbox were we techys talk for hours on end of the obscure technologies of mankinds past and how to restore them :D
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http://pcengine.freeforums.org/new_chat.php
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I'll head on over when I get a chance guys. Thanks for the invite. I work to dam much.
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I just got more gears in if anyone needs them.
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Yeah, I'm interested in a couple sets! I'll send you a PM about it.
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I was image searching for plastic spur gears to see whether I could find any that remotely look like that problematic fragile one in the PC Engine CD-ROM2 and noticed quite a few links to this place:
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/271844309/Plastic_spur_gear_mould.html
It seems to be a site where manufacturers offer their wares to be sold in bulks of varying sizes. Most of the gear related producers seem to indicate that they are able to make these according to custom specifications. The link above seems to have a very reasonable 38 set minimum order limit as well.
It might be a long shot but perhaps it is possible to secure a supply of perfect replacement gears for broken CD-ROM2 units.
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Keith do you have any gears left? I want to secure one. I sent you a PM a while back.
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Yes, I still have them and plan to keep getting them as long as the places I order from don't run out.
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so when these replacements are done, how long do they last in the system?
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should be considered a permanent fix
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They should be a permanent fix. I haven't heard of any falling apart but then again I have only been using these gears for about a year now. I believe the reason the old gear breaks is due to friction since it spins on a stationary spindle. With this setup everything moves together so no center spindle friction on any of the gears.
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So, you say the gears cut loading time in games? That sounds awesome sicne the loading time on some can be quite long.
This just makes me realize that I'd like to get quite a bit of work done on my systems that I just don't have the time for any more.
[ul][li]This gear fix if it reduces load times
The TGCD register issue that you mentioned in a different post (my TGCD has had that noise since day 1 out of the box in 1990 or so)
DIN 8 installed for a DIN to SCART cable for RGB installed in my TGCD base unit
Region switch mod
Full cap replacement on my Express
Potentially updated screen for Express[/li][li][/li][/ul]
Wonder how much someone would charge to do all these things as a 1 stop shop kind of deal. I'd be really nervous about sending my prized system out in the mail, but some of this work would just increase enjoyment.
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Being that you want an updated screen for your express I'd get a hold of Thesteve here in these forums. I have no experience updating express screens.
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That'd actually be the lowest on my list and more of a wish than anything. I'd really like all the other stuff done though.
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well im around when your ready
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Sent you a PM!
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Received the gears today. Thank you very much!!
I'll try to repair my broken drive the next days if i can find the free time.
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Another question: If I bought the gear(s) mentioned here, would I be able to get them installed by you if I sent the CD unit? Can you quote me a price too?
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For people on the edge about purchasing one of these:
I ordered one of these gears about a month ago and only just found the time to install it now on my Japanese CD-ROM-ROM.
It was a fairly painless install. The guide made it sound like the laser assembly was a bigger pain in the butt to remove from the shell than it actually was. However, there was a plate I had to remove that wasn't mentioned in the guide (when removing the the grounding wire from the larger ribbon cable). It just slid out though so it wasn't a big deal. I laughed when I found that I didn't have to pull the old, threadless middle gear off, but, instead, it just broke in half and fell off the shaft when I touched it! :lol:
After I popped in the gear and put it all together again, I tried it with a CD and found that on later tracks it would skip ahead or behind a good 20 seconds or so every 30 secs to a minute. I tried adjusting the "speed" pot as mentioned in the guide but it did nothing but make it worse (only when I turned it to the extreme ends). I tried greasing the laser's sled with some clear silicone grease...and it fixed the problem!
Overall, its taken about an hour and a half to do this mod at a normal-to-slow pace (not including the full audio CD run-thru which I'm currently doing) and its made a totally useless CD-ROM-ROM work again! I could not be more pleased! :dance: Definitely get one of these if you've got a dead drive!
And thanks, Keith Courage!
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yeah, the guide makes it sound like a lot of work even though it's not. I just wanted to try and cover everything in detail as much as possible.
Also, you didn't really have to take off that black cover for the laser assembly that you mentioned but it can't hurt anything. With just a slight bit of force you can slide the new gear in without taking that plate off.
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I just finished up taking mine apart. The only part I had difficulty with was removing that small metal piece and putting the screw back in. The entire teardown took 10 minutes, but getting that screw back in took another 15. Damn my huge hands! Ha! My CD is ready for the new gear. I am anxiously waiting for the mailman to deliver it.
Keith, if there are any photos you want me to take to upgrade your guide just let me know.
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I got my gear today, installed it, switched the blue and pink wires, put everything back together, turned on my Turbo CD and . . . the disc won't spin. The laser is moving, but for some reason, the disc is stationary. My Turbo CD had been working previously (I just had to keep opening it up and moving the middle gear to loosen it, which is why I wanted to do this mod).
Anyone have any ideas what I might have done? Everything appears to be intact, so I'm having problems determining what might have gone wrong.
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you might have lost connection to the laser sled (broken or unplugged cable)
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I'm going to show my ignorance here but, would the laser still move if that were the case? I followed all of the wires, and everything appears to be intact.
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Double check that you put the lens cables back in the correct direction. The larger one goes in with the contacts facing outwards away from the system and the smaller one goes in with the contacts facing inwards. Also as Thesteve said you should check to see if there are any rips in the lens cables
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Well . . . damn. The only issue I saw with the cables is that the ground strip was coming loose. I pressed it back on, made sure that everything was hooked up correctly, and the disc still won't spin. The only other issue that I can see is that I have at least one cap that has leaked (either one of the 470 uF caps or the 100 uF cap that is next to it—they're so close I can't tell which).
Any other suggestions?
EDIT:
Never mind. I pressed down on the CD assembly, and now discs spin. Working well now. Thanks for the help, and thanks for finding this solution to the gear problem, Keith!
EDIT 2:
Well, I thought everything was okay, but it won't spin some discs. It seems to do okay with Turbo CDs, but I put in an audio CD, and it either won't spin at all or will just barely spin. It's almost as if it's struggling to spin the disc. Could this have anything at all to do with the potentiometer? I'm going to try to adjust it.
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struggling to spin? Is the assembly back in all the way? You shouldn't have to press down on it to get it to not scrape on anything. The pots could need a slight adjustment but not much. Make sure you didn't bump them and knock them way off during the install.
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Yeah, it looks like I f'ed this one up. The screw that held the metal piece I needed to remove to make room for the gear wouldn't unscrew. I tried a few times, and all that I managed to do was strip the head a little. So, I decided to cut the metal piece out instead. I didn't realize how thin the metal is for the black cover, and I guess when I was cutting the metal piece out, I pressed into it and bent it. I've been trying to fix it, but I haven't managed to get it right yet, and more things are going wrong, so . . . I'm done, at least for tonight. I've managed what should have been an easy fix into a bit of a nightmare :)
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Keith, I received the new gear today. My CD unit was already lying open awaiting the new part. I tossed it in, closed it up and nothing... Not even power. So on a whim I installed it into the docking station. It powered up right away, and the laser moved to the middle. Sweet! Why the heck doesn't the AC adapter work with it when it's stand-alone? Anyway, the only CD based game I have is Final Zone II. I tossed it in and it loaded up right away. I started watching the cut scenes... The audio seems fine to me. Even the 'warning' by the TurboGrafx voice sounded perfect. Looks like no adjustments for me. The only thing I noticed out-of-sync was the voice to the lips of the characters in the cut scene's. I'm guessing this is normal, as getting them in sync wasn't a huge thing back in the 90's.
One thing I did notice is that when the laser moves to another track I can hear a loud "grrrrr" sound. I remember you saying the unit will be louder with the new gear, but I'm not sure if this is the normal loud you mentioned or a different one. It doesn't sound terrible, no gears grinding (I think), but it's not a warm fuzzy sound either.
Could you confirm a few things with me;
1) I take it the out-of-sync lips with voice is normal in Final Zone II?
2) How loud should the unit be when the laser moves to another track quickly?
I never owned a TG-CD back in the day so I'm not sure how they behave, or how loud they were/are. I can tell you this is the best $12 I ever spent. I now have a functional TG-CD!
[EDIT] BTW, that larger lens cable is a pain in the ass to re-install! Could they have made it any shorter!
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Did you look at the two gears and spin them to see if all the teeth lined up well before putting it back together? It might need to be shimmed. If that part check out fine then try this. Play your final zone game as a music CD. To do this you hit play on the cd player itself. Start by going to track 3 and then hit stop. Did you hear a weird sound? If not procede to track 4 then hit stop and so on. If it doesn't happen until around track 12-15 or so then the sound you are hearing is the plastic part that holds the lens on track. Sometimes the lens can move so fast that this part hops around when the lens returns to the stop center position. This is especially noticeable when a game loads for the first time from a games first cinema cut scene. It is possible to slightly bend the peice or add some grease to the lens track to try and remedy it but usually it's just something that happens from wear and tear. It is not gear related and shouldn't really get worse over time. I have a CD drive on hand that has made that sound for about 3 years now depending on the game being played and it hasn't gotten any worse.
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Did you look at the two gears and spin them to see if all the teeth lined up well before putting it back together? It might need to be shimmed. If that part check out fine then try this. Play your final zone game as a music CD. To do this you hit play on the cd player itself. Start by going to track 3 and then hit stop. Did you hear a weird sound? If not procede to track 4 then hit stop and so on. If it doesn't happen until around track 12-15 or so then the sound you are hearing is the plastic part that holds the lens on track. Sometimes the lens can move so fast that this part hops around when the lens returns to the stop center position. This is especially noticeable when a game loads for the first time from a games first cinema cut scene. It is possible to slightly bend the peice or add some grease to the lens track to try and remedy it but usually it's just something that happens from wear and tear. It is not gear related and shouldn't really get worse over time. I have a CD drive on hand that has made that sound for about 3 years now depending on the game being played and it hasn't gotten any worse.
I did check the gears. They spun easily. I did not butt the teeth 100%. I left a very small gap. I did use a small shim (one of Sparky's labels, just the backing).
What you're telling me sounds like what I'm hearing. I've never used the TG-CD to play music. So I put the v2.0 system card in, put the FZII disc in, turn on the power and hit play on the TG-CD? Sorry, I'm a complete noob. :( I need to be spoonfed through the process.
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Yes, leave in the CD system card and then hit play on the top of the CD drive itself. If you only hear the noise when hitting stop from the higher track numbers then the issue isn't gear related. Meaning you can just ignore it and use the CD drive as is or if it really bothers you try some grease on the lens track which will slow down the lens movement slightly or actually bend the metal tracking piece every so slightly(This one is kind of a pain and risky since if you break it there are no replacements available so I wouldn't do it if it's your first time). Here is a pic of the piece circled in blue. You would have to remove the piece then bend it ever so slightly. The slightest changed will make a huge difference so just barely bend it so the teeth will push down a bit firmer then before and then screw back on. I think this part just wears down over time. Before putting the drive all the way back together you can check the lens movement with it still apart by hitting play on the CD drive. Honestly if you only hear the noise every now and again i'd just leave it alone or try some grease on the lens track. Wouldn't want to accidentally break a part on the drive when it is currently working.
(http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/9041/pic20ya.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/402/pic20ya.jpg/)
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I may just give this a shot. So far I've had good luck with this repair. I'll try the grease first, then maybe bend the metal. I'll have to see how flimsy the piece is before deciding to do anything. If it does break, I take it the only way to fix it would be to replace the laser?
I dread having to fight with that large lens cable again, but I'll do it because I prefer my electronic devices quiet.
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The piece doesn't come with a laser. The only way to get another one would be to buy another CD drive.
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The piece doesn't come with a laser. The only way to get another one would be to buy another CD drive.
Ugh... maybe I won't bend it.
I'll give the audio test a try and get back to you.
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*double post*
I tried the audio test out last night with FZII. The noise started at track 17, but it was only really noticeable at 30. I'm going to try adding the grease and see if that does anything. One shitty thing I discovered while doing this test is that one of the LEDs is burnt out on the display. So 20 displays, but the middle LED doesn't light up on the number 2. :cry:
Wanna point me to the thread to replace the LED display? (I'm being serious).
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Well your CD drive isn't really all that bad off if it doesn't happen until around track 30. Try using some lithium grease on the lens track. That should slow it down a bit. Honestly I have never changed a display before. This is the first I've heard of a light being out in one. It's up to you if you want to change it. There appears to be 10 points on the back of it to de-solder. Not sure where to buy a replacement one. Maybe someone else here knows. I'd leave it alone since when you are playing a game it only displays the letters PC anyways.
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Hmmm i wonder if you could change the digital display to another color.... :twisted:
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i think those come in red and green
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Yeah, as soon as I saw it I thought green would be a better choice. I'll have to desolder it and look for a replacement. LED displays are pretty standard so I doubt this one would be proprietary to NEC.
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so standard radio shack used to have them (not sure if they still do)
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so standard radio shack used to have them (not sure if they still do)
The RadioShack's in Canada are now called "The Source" (owned by Circuit City) and don't have anything like this any more. I visited my local RadioScrap the other day and was greeted when I walked in by the salesman...
"Anything I can help you with?"
"I need a tin of flux"
"A tin of what?"
I then proceed to explain what it was, and what it was used for. The sales guy escorted me over to the soldering section and to my dismay there was literally nothing there. I saw one soldering kit, and nothing else. No empty pegs, nothing out of stock, just them not carrying anything. It's really a shame. I use to use them all the time. Hell I work there for two years back in 2001. I have to visit a specialty store for this stuff now.
Does anyone have any specs on the LED display? Voltage it uses? Dimensions?
[EDIT] Sorry, I'll create a new thread for this. I don't want to hijack KC's gear thread.
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hey keight were can i buy the gear? u said u sell but where? how can i pay u? i live in eurpe spain, where are u from? please answerd me as soon as posible. thank u here is my mail too edu220477@hotmail.com
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Just messaged you back.
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Did you look at the two gears and spin them to see if all the teeth lined up well before putting it back together? It might need to be shimmed. If that part check out fine then try this. Play your final zone game as a music CD. To do this you hit play on the cd player itself. Start by going to track 3 and then hit stop. Did you hear a weird sound? If not procede to track 4 then hit stop and so on. If it doesn't happen until around track 12-15 or so then the sound you are hearing is the plastic part that holds the lens on track. Sometimes the lens can move so fast that this part hops around when the lens returns to the stop center position. This is especially noticeable when a game loads for the first time from a games first cinema cut scene. It is possible to slightly bend the peice or add some grease to the lens track to try and remedy it but usually it's just something that happens from wear and tear. It is not gear related and shouldn't really get worse over time. I have a CD drive on hand that has made that sound for about 3 years now depending on the game being played and it hasn't gotten any worse.
would a cd with scratches also cause this. I messed my winds of thunder up a couple years ago trying to get new cd laser to work and also whats the best grease to use on a turbo duo rx gears.
ill probably end up repairing my t16 cdrom with these gears though but iv got some other stuff going on right now so money is being diverted elsewhere
EDIT: its only a couple of scratches i think i might get it professionally resurfaced with my Ys I originally got 15 years ago.
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got the gear today and installed in on a JP unit, man this thing is working like a champ now! Thank a ton. I have also noticed the load time differnce, like when the game normally pauses in Gates of Thunder when the bosses load, it is noticeably faster!
I do want to upgrade my spindle unit to the "snap-in" kind so if anyone has one that is compatible let me know.
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got the gear today and installed in on a JP unit, man this thing is working like a champ now! Thank a ton. I have also noticed the load time differnce, like when the game normally pauses in Gates of Thunder when the bosses load, it is noticeably faster!
I do want to upgrade my spindle unit to the "snap-in" kind so if anyone has one that is compatible let me know.
Glad you got it working man!!
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Me too thanks Samurai!
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Trying to order some since my gear just lost a row of teeth. I've already done all the necessary mods. Just waiting for keith to pm me the paypal address to send money to.
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The keith courage gears showed up today. I ordered three of them because after probing around with the original hardware I could tell that removing that middle gear is a must. I did all the necessary modding and stuck everything back together annnnnnddddd....
(http://imgboot.com/images/Drakon/pcecdresurrected.jpg)
Words cannot describe how thankful I am that this fix exists. I love how my cd unit looks and I'd be very sad if I had to play games on a duo (I know it sounds strange). Installing this gear is a lot of work and I recommend people hire an experienced modder to get the job done right. I highly recommend people to buy these gears since they remove such a big hardware flaw. My cd unit has never run better.
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I too was able to revive my unit with a gear from KC. I was replacing the laser already and noticed the gear was about to turn to mush...
12 years since my TG-CD had spun! Awesome!
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Yeah I thought this gear was just a replacement that would eventually break like the original gear. But these keith courage gears are much more they make it so you'll never have another broken gear.
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I bought one too, and it worked to get my CD unit running again. Just curious, but is louder than it was? I haven't greased mine up, so I think it's just moving SUPER fast and make a lot of noise accessing tracks. It's not grinding, but it's moving fast.
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It does move faster so it's going to be louder no matter what you try. Some grease may help but be careful cause I've greased some which then ended up making the movement so slow that the track would not move.
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It does move faster so it's going to be louder no matter what you try. Some grease may help but be careful cause I've greased some which then ended up making the movement so slow that the track would not move.
I know we spoke before and I think you mentioned to use lithium grease sparingly. I was just curious if Drakon and Lost Monkey had similar noise issues. Right now it's disassembled again (LED fix), but when it was together it was loud enough to scare me into thinking something was going to break when it tracked. Maybe the best thing to do is record the sound and post it here. I guess I just want to know if my new normal is similar to everyone else's new normal.
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I know the sound you speak of. If it happens at all(some drives don't) it would be during the load up on a RPG game of some sort. The lens moves very far back and forth when loading up the beginning cinema scenes. The sound is the lens hoping around on the track just for a few moments from moving too fast to the stopping point. It is not the gears grinding and shouldn't cause any future issues from what I can tell. The reason there was originally a 3rd gear in there was to slow the speed down. Unfortunately no one has yet to find an exact gear replacement so until then this is the best we have. Maybe someone knows a way to reduce the voltage to the motor to give it less juice?
Also, 50% of the time you can tighten up the tension on the plastic piece that holes the lens to the track and it will fix the too fast skip issue. However it doesn't always work if the lens motor is too strong. Here is a picture of the part I am speaking of and how I bent it down ever so slightly. Do not bend it too much or you could break it and the only way I know of to get another one is to buy a doner CD drive. A very small bend can take care of the issue.
(http://imageshack.us/a/img189/7664/cimg6823j.jpg)
To conclude, if you only here the loud skip once or twice when playing a game I would just leave it alone. I don't see it wearing out parts anytime soon since the sound is produced by the lens hoping off the track for a moment and not produced by teeth grinding together.
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the motor voltage is ramped (starts low, and increases till the required results are achieved)
just had one here that would require a higher voltage to get the motor to move, then overshoot causing track jumps.
the solution was to replace the motor.
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I know we spoke before and I think you mentioned to use lithium grease sparingly. I was just curious if Drakon and Lost Monkey had similar noise issues. Right now it's disassembled again (LED fix), but when it was together it was loud enough to scare me into thinking something was going to break when it tracked. Maybe the best thing to do is record the sound and post it here. I guess I just want to know if my new normal is similar to everyone else's new normal.
Mine is loud at certain times as well, and as KC mentioned - I think it is sometimes moving too fast and missing tracks. I could not get it to load the Sherlock Holmes 2 introduction - it would just get stuck on this horrible sounding groove where I could here that the sled was moving all the way from one end of the disc, resetting and doing it again. When it does load, which it 99% of the time, it is noticeably faster.
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It's louder but when the lid is closed I still barely hear mine. Seems to load faster too now.
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It's louder but when the lid is closed I still barely hear mine. Seems to load faster too now.
Mine is definitely noticeable. It has that "What the hell was that?!" effect whenever I have someone else in the room and it tracks. I'll report back after I give my spindle a good lube job. Er... get your minds out of the gutter people! :lol:
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Lost Monkey
Your drive either needs the potentiometers adjusted or a new lens if it is getting stuck at a certain spot of a game when loading. The gear is not the issue with your sherlock holmes not loading correctly. I have had to change the lens on a few drives that did this exact thing that you are speaking of and it fixed the problem. The faulty lens also would get stuck loading dynastic hero and go back and forth as well so maybe check that game too. However, the faulty lens still worked fine for most other games.
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Okay I did some more playing and yeah it's loud. But it works perfectly so I don't care!
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Lost Monkey
Your drive either needs the potentiometers adjusted or a new lens if it is getting stuck at a certain spot of a game when loading. The gear is not the issue with your sherlock holmes not loading correctly. I have had to change the lens on a few drives that did this exact thing that you are speaking of and it fixed the problem. The faulty lens also would get stuck loading dynastic hero and go back and forth as well so maybe check that game too. However, the faulty lens still worked fine for most other games.
Lost Monkey
Your drive either needs the potentiometers adjusted or a new lens if it is getting stuck at a certain spot of a game when loading. The gear is not the issue with your sherlock holmes not loading correctly. I have had to change the lens on a few drives that did this exact thing that you are speaking of and it fixed the problem. The faulty lens also would get stuck loading dynastic hero and go back and forth as well so maybe check that game too. However, the faulty lens still worked fine for most other games.
I plan to do some adjusting this weekend, the drive went from not spinning to working with a couple of tiny adjustments, and I left it at that. Hopefully some more small adjustments will do the trick.
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After some more adjustments, my drive will now load the intro on Sherlock Holmes 2. I don't have an original Dynastic Hero to try, but I plan on picking up the J-SCD again soon. Can't remember why I sold mine in the first place... I loved that game...
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I found out that with my cheap cdrs the system with all games would eventually glitch and crash. With taiyo yudens all games have so far been 100% problem free.
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@Keith, just wanted you to know I added some white lithium grease to the spindle of my CD unit. Not a ton, but I did put a tiny bit in each thread. After sealing up the unit and docking it into the TG the noise was gone!!!
Looks like you were right about adding some grease. Not that I ever doubted you, but I just wanted to let you know. Sorry it took so long to confirm, but I finally replaced my busted LED display as well! All things are coming up FiftyQuid. :lol:
Thank you again for all your help getting me up and running. 8)
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I finally found a game that didn't agree with this mod, that game is art of fighting. When the game tried to load the continue screen after losing a match it would go in an infinite loop of trying to load and failing and trying over and over and over. All other cd games ran fine. I tried adjusting the speed pot like keith courage suggests at the end of his guide. After messing with the speed pot for a while I managed to get art of fighting running just fine. Thanks again to keith courage for including that small but VERY important piece of information. Even though most of the time you don't need to adjust that pot, it's good to know that very rarely you will need to. If I hadn't known about that pot I'm sure it would have taken me much longer to fix my gear replaced pce cd drive.
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Yeah, AoF is probably a good test candidate as it seems to load a lot of data.
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Well it's weird, loading everything else was fine, just the continue screen was getting messed up. It probably has to do with loading stuff that's further towards the outer edge of the cd. Like he says you want to test something that seeks and reads from the outside of the disc.
Yeah, AoF is probably a good test candidate as it seems to load a lot of data.
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Just made a few updates on the procedure for installing the CD gear. At one point I mentioned possibly needing a shim for the lens motor on a very small amount of drives. Turns out that simply flipping the lens motor over fixes the issue on most. Must be that the spindle is not perfectly centered on some motors or possibly that the mounting is warped.
Also, grease definitely seems to help with the lens moving too fast issue that happens with some drives. However, most drives don't need it since the motor usually gets weak with age naturally making it a bit slower.
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I want to order some, how can I do it?
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Pm sent back
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Dude! Un f*cking believeable! I fixed 2 cd units
In a row! Thanks sooo much!!!!
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I still plan on carrying these so..
bump a dump.
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PM sent!
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Still got the new gears if anyone needs them. I also have some good used original gears but honestly I have no way to tell how long they would last.
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Just got my gears today and I successfully got my first drive to work on the first try. The tutorial is super easy to follow and worked like magic, so pumped about it. Thanks again Keith
(http://imageshack.us/a/img826/1801/2kf5.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/826/2kf5.jpg/)
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Awesome!!! I love seeing people who still use CRT TVs for their retro gaming. CRT is the way to go.
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Awesome!!! I love seeing people who still use CRT TVs for their retro gaming. CRT is the way to go.
WARNING: Unsolicited recycling approaching...
[(http://junk.tg-16.com/images/MotoRoaderMC_1.jpg)
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Still up for sale? Please PM me.
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Sorry, I thought I had messaged you back a few days ago. PM Sent.
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I'm also interested in one of your gears :)
Kind regards,
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All hail to KC. He works magic. His gear work has worked flawlessly, on top of the other work he performed on my unit. This guys work is top notch. I highly recommend!
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Looking to buy your gears. Just got a CD-ROM2 and broke the middle gear in three as soon as I turned it to get a better look at the teeth.
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I can vouch that they work great and the install is pretty easy. I can swap them out in about 5 minutes now (of course I've done dozens of them...)
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Hi,
my CD-rom² gear has just died. If you still have gears, I will be very intersted. :dance:
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for future notice anyone interested in a gear you should just send me a private message. I only check these threads maybe once every 2 to 3 days.
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I need the cd gear for pc engine duo
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http://gamedoctorhk.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=72_21_123&products_id=2085
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Crap wish I saw this last week. Bought a gear from console 5. Expensive but well worth it
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