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NEC TG-16/TE/TurboDuo => TG/PCE Repair/Mod Discussion => Topic started by: Duo_R on March 17, 2009, 07:48:33 PM

Title: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: Duo_R on March 17, 2009, 07:48:33 PM
Seriously, what are we going to do with the pile of unrepairable TG-CD Units? Should we start calling them TG-CD Boosters?
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD's going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: Platinumfungi on March 18, 2009, 01:53:30 AM
Are lots of people having problems with TGCDs?  And if so, perhaps if we start to compile some information on these problems we can come up with some solutions.
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD's going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: pceslayer on March 18, 2009, 05:54:47 AM
Major problem No.1!

No suitable replacement compound gear for the unit!  :cry:

Aside from yanking it from a CDR-35D they are impossible to find. And that yank is almost as expensive as buying another TGCD/PCECD.
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD's going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: Duo_R on March 18, 2009, 11:09:20 AM
I hear about a new case every week, and it almost always is the little gear. Someone needs to cast a mold of one of these suckers before every last one disintegrates.

Are lots of people having problems with TGCDs?  And if so, perhaps if we start to compile some information on these problems we can come up with some solutions.
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD's going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: Necromancer on March 18, 2009, 11:17:29 AM
I hear about a new case every week, and it almost always is the little gear. Someone needs to cast a mold of one of these suckers before every last one disintegrates.

Has anyone contacted a custom plastic fabricator to see what it would cost?
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD's going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: Platinumfungi on March 18, 2009, 04:49:04 PM
I hear about a new case every week, and it almost always is the little gear. Someone needs to cast a mold of one of these suckers before every last one disintegrates.

Has anyone contacted a custom plastic fabricator to see what it would cost?

Or make the new gear from metal. If need be, make all the attaching gears from metal to prevent metal on plastic wear. I know of some metal shops that you "bring in something and they'll duplicate it". Not sure how small of an item they can do though...
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: pceslayer on March 20, 2009, 08:32:08 AM
Didn't "The Old Rover" at one point say he had sent the gear off to a plastic molding place to get a quote?
 
Whatever happened to that?

*EDIT*
Here is the thread...

http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=5010.msg86339#msg86339
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: Platinumfungi on March 25, 2009, 02:38:11 PM
I had a guy tell me recently that he had a TGCD where some caps got replaced... Has anyone heard of the TGCDs having cap issues?

Also, can anyone please tell me what a TGCD is supposed to say on the cd player display when the unit is playing a game and working properly?  I have a few units here that I'm playing with that only say "PC" on the display and are in various states of working condition.

Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory?
Post by: nat on March 25, 2009, 03:19:10 PM
"PC" is correct for proper operation.

"00" is not.
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory?
Post by: Platinumfungi on March 26, 2009, 02:34:13 AM
"PC" is correct for proper operation.

"00" is not.

Ah bless you Nat :pray: No one could answer that question! Do you know what it stands for?
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: pceslayer on March 26, 2009, 03:27:03 AM
I always assumed it meant it was in PC(engine) mode.

Could also mean PC as in Computer mode since its the only time it reads the Data tracks.


Does anyone know if the CDR-35D also says PC when being accessed from the dock?
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: Platinumfungi on March 26, 2009, 07:40:22 AM
I always assumed it meant it was in PC(engine) mode.

Could also mean PC as in Computer mode since its the only time it reads the Data tracks.

Does anyone know if the CDR-35D also says PC when being accessed from the dock?

I thought PC might stand for PCE as well but the units I have here are USA so I thought it was odd.

The CDR-35D just makes a horrid grinding/humming noise when I hooked them up to a TGCD dock. If I press the play button "0" appears but so far I can't get anything else to show up. So no luck with getting it to say "PC" for now...
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory?
Post by: Necromancer on March 26, 2009, 07:56:37 AM
Do you know what it stands for?

In my mind, it stands for Phucking Cool.  :dance:
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: pceslayer on March 26, 2009, 08:57:19 AM
I thought PC might stand for PCE as well but the units I have here are USA so I thought it was odd.

The CDR-35D just makes a horrid grinding/humming noise when I hooked them up to a TGCD dock. If I press the play button "0" appears but so far I can't get anything else to show up. So no luck with getting it to say "PC" for now...
The TGCD unit is basicly a black recycled PCE CDROM2 unit, so maybe they never changed it...  :-s

And the only way to get the CDR-35D to work is with a PCB swap... Since it doesn't work in the TGCD at all, I wonder if it says PC when connected to the SCSI dock for a computer. Probably Does...


Also... Who would chip in to see some of these gears molded?
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: Platinumfungi on March 26, 2009, 11:13:05 AM
Also... Who would chip in to see some of these gears molded?

Do you have a price/quantity estimate?
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: pceslayer on March 26, 2009, 02:20:28 PM
Also... Who would chip in to see some of these gears molded?

Do you have a price/quantity estimate?
I have none of the above, but I was thinking...

Why not make this a community thing?

All we would need is to send a few semi broken gears to a few places and get some estimates.

And then create a "Save the PCECD/TGCD"  dontation fund or something and raise the money to get a few hundred or thousand of these things made.

Then offer them up for sale for a decent price from the site.
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: Platinumfungi on March 28, 2009, 03:19:54 AM
Aye. I'm not sure if I'll still have them when we might be ready to do this, but I currently have gears that aren't damaged. I'd think it would be best to use a functioning part to send off for the molding and might make it cheaper if they just have to mold the object and not do any further "creating".
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: BlackandBlue on April 09, 2009, 07:59:21 PM
I think the gear that breaks is a 14 tooth gear right?  Think that a 14 tooth pinion gear from a hobbie shop would work?  something like this: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXWUY3&P=7
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: pceslayer on April 10, 2009, 01:59:03 PM
I think the gear that breaks is a 14 tooth gear right?  Think that a 14 tooth pinion gear from a hobbie shop would work?  something like this: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXWUY3&P=7

its a compound gear aka a dual spur gear... its like having 2 gears stuck together
(the larger is a spur gear and the smaller a pinion).

The original gear has 23 teeth on the larger cog and 15 teeth on the smaller wider cog.
The larger cog is aprox. 6mm across and 1mm thick/deep and the smaller is 5mm across and 2mm thick/deep.
The entire gear is aprox. 3mm deep
The bore is aprox. 2mm
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: BlackandBlue on May 02, 2009, 01:14:26 PM
Yay!  I get to join the "I got a broken f*#!ing compound gear in my PC Engine CDROM unit too" club.  I just spent $60 and a damn lot of time cleaning/fixing this damn thing and within 2 weeks, the gear shreds.  We really need to find a suitable, cheap replacement or maybe find the ratio of all of the gears and find a complete replacement set.  Anyone good with robotics or.... um... gearology?

I thing I'm going to start ripping apart all of my spare computer cdroms to see if any has something I can use.  This sucks.
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: BlackandBlue on May 03, 2009, 04:22:24 AM
Well, I took apart every cd player Im not using in the house and found a similiar gear in my old Sony Vaio laptop drive.  Since the 23 tooth gear was stripped, and not the 15 tooth, I cut the gear in half and glued half of the Sony gear to it.  So, its a frankenstein gear, but it appears to be working.  I counted and the Sony gear had 21 teeth.  We''ll see how long the glue lasts for, but it was switching between music tracks and not skipping a beat.
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: Custm42435 on May 22, 2009, 01:14:02 PM
was the original unit a sony unit? i know a LOT of Jukebox cd units that were manufactured by sony and phillips around 1989-1993 that the optics always went bad on them, but in almost every case the gear parts were always still good..  we used to throw them away when they went bad.. but i know where some are still laying around if anyone wants me to get a few of them and see if the gears match up. if they do match up, im sure these units with bad optics could be picked up pretty cheap, as most of the time Operators just replace the whole cd unit when one stops working. .
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: Custm42435 on May 22, 2009, 01:30:40 PM
The sony cd jukebox units look like this
http://cgi.ebay.com/Rowe-NSM-Rockola-Lot-of-CDM-12-Parts_W0QQitemZ280347091076QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item4145fd2084&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A0%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

Specifically, the cdm-12 players used a Phillips transport mechanism, Sony servo
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: kid_rondeau on July 03, 2009, 04:59:21 AM
Wow...nice to know it's not just me! If I had more money and time I'd be right in the thick of it with you guys to find a solution. But that's life...

Keep up the good work!
Title: Re: Are broken TG-CD units going to become the new Turbo Booster Plus accessory???
Post by: SignOfZeta on July 30, 2009, 09:00:04 PM
So it turns out I have a CDROM2 with a busted gear too. Since I work with engineers all day I'll ask them what they think. I'm willing to make this a group thing so the community can keep these old clunkers rolling.

In the meanwhile I'll probably start taking apart all sorts of crap around the house to see if, by chance, I have something with a compatible gear in it. I will keep a log my discoveries in this post.

Things that don't contain a compatible gear:

Panasonic portable cassette player circa 1989 model number RQ-V158

Small clock with quartz movement shaped like a turtle from a company called Smeco.

Zoid circa 2001 (same motor as the ones from 1982, as far as I can tell)

Dreamcast