PCE CD ROM Not Reading CDRs

[bishopcruz]

I was talking to Steve in chat, and I seem to have fixed it. I adjusted the pot on the laser just a hair, and the Drac X CDR loads perfectly. It may be my imagination, but I think the load times on real CDs are a hair faster as well.

Ah awesome, risky, but glad it worked out. If you had steve as copilot, odds were more in your favor of course. The other protip is the regreasing of the slider pole for what Keith mentioned. When redbook audio tracks cut out and don't resume until the next scene change, event, etc. or reboot, it's time to get that 20+ year old grease off and apply some fresh white lithium type on. Restore the agility of the laser for its sliding. Too much friction, you start to get the skips, misreads, etc.

Missed this before, guess I'll have to track down some grease. See if that helps. It's happening on some of my burns, and on Ys III which is a bit scratched but played fine on my old setup decades ago. My Cosmic Fantasy II won't load at all. I might just get them resurfaced and see if that helps.

[Bernie]

I just use bacon grease. 

[wolfman]

Yesterday I tried a CDR (EMTEC brand) on my CDROM2, but it refused to play at all...the lowest I can go on my writer is 10x

Lens is clean...gear lubed, gears run smoothly. And plays Originals....

[esadajr]

With my DuoR I had a similar issue along with (barely noticeable) bands on the video. After I replaced the AC adapter, the bands were gone and it played all CDRs again. Still I limit the CDR playing to translations and fancy stuff like good ol Sapphy.

[bishopcruz]

How complicated is greasing the gears? I saw one thing online for the original separate unit and it seemed like a real pita. Is it easier on the Duo?

[Bernie]

Yesterday I tried a CDR (EMTEC brand) on my CDROM2, but it refused to play at all...the lowest I can go on my writer is 10x

Lens is clean...gear lubed, gears run smoothly. And plays Originals....

With these machines, its a pot shot on whether they will play CDr or not.  SOme will play whatever you throw at em, some will play certain burns with certain discs, and I have had some just refuse to do shit with the burned discs, no matter what I do.  Now, I HAVE had the laser go too far on the black Duos, and had to take it apart to fix it, which was fairly easy.  I think only the black Duos had this issue though.  I guess the best thing to remember, is you are trying to get a machine to read/do something that wasn't intended or even around for that matter, at that time. 

[wolfman]

Now, I HAVE had the laser go too far on the black Duos, and had to take it apart to fix it, which was fairly easy.

What do you mean with "go too far"?

[Necromancer]

They can go too far down the sled trying to find the outer edge of the disc and get stuck, needing a nudge back towards center.

[wolfman]

Yes, Ive having that problem too on the drive I am repairing @ the moment. When the laser finds it is not at the center when the drive powers up it goess right to the edge until I press PLAY. Then it moves to centre and finds disc, finally spinning up. My other drive however doesnt show this kind of behaviour...I am thinking about putting a limit switch on the outer edge....

Does someone know whats causing this behaviour?

[thesteve]

If its moving before hitting play/run then you have an open feedback loop on the board (servo circuit)


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[wolfman]

If its moving before hitting play/run then you have an open feedback loop on the board (servo circuit)


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Where would you look for that exactly?
Strange thing is, it doesn´t do that always. Didn´t find a pattern when, though.

[wolfman]

If its moving before hitting play/run then you have an open feedback loop on the board (servo circuit)


Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk 2

Do you mean one of the resistors surrounding the BA6290 is probably blown? Would that cause an open feedback loop?

[Bonknuts]

Yesterday I tried a CDR (EMTEC brand) on my CDROM2, but it refused to play at all...the lowest I can go on my writer is 10x

Lens is clean...gear lubed, gears run smoothly. And plays Originals....

 I have the original brief case model setup as well, and it doesn't like CD-Rs much. I only bought that model because I thought it looked cool. For actually playing stuffs, I use my trusty SuperCDROM^2 unit. Plays everything under the sun.

 As far as the Black Duo units getting the 'parked laser' issue, that's probably a bug in the firmware side of the CD setup. The laser module (on rails) goes too far to the right and the motor wedges it in there tight. It can't unwedge it though, so you have to rotate the spindle that module is on - manually. This only seemed to happen with really cheap CD-Rs, from my experience.

 As for burning, the slowest speed doesn't always produce the best CD-R results for the PCe CD systems. I've have a burner that only produced working CD-Rs for the CD unit, if you burned at 16x or higher. If I burned at 8x (the lowest), they would hardly work on the PCECD units. Just goes to show, not all burners are equal; you need to experiment with different settings.

[bishopcruz]

Yesterday I tried a CDR (EMTEC brand) on my CDROM2, but it refused to play at all...the lowest I can go on my writer is 10x

Lens is clean...gear lubed, gears run smoothly. And plays Originals....

 As far as the Black Duo units getting the 'parked laser' issue, that's probably a bug in the firmware side of the CD setup. The laser module (on rails) goes too far to the right and the motor wedges it in there tight. It can't unwedge it though, so you have to rotate the spindle that module is on - manually. This only seemed to happen with really cheap CD-Rs, from my experience.

 As for burning, the slowest speed doesn't always produce the best CD-R results for the PCe CD systems. I've have a burner that only produced working CD-Rs for the CD unit, if you burned at 16x or higher. If I burned at 8x (the lowest), they would hardly work on the PCECD units. Just goes to show, not all burners are equal; you need to experiment with different settings.

Good to know. I'm thinking of ordering some MAM A's that are 74min. A little more expensive than the usual, but not too bad overall. Sadly can't lightscribe them though, which makes me sad. Still my CD-ROM is useless until I get my Torx t10 screwdriver in.

[Bonknuts]

There's the option of having professional CD-Rs done. Though this would have to be a group order, to keep the cost down. Professional CD-R replication is for short runs, but there are companies that offer this service for older embedded systems that have a harder time reading newer burned CD-Rs. It's not as fancy as pressing a CD, but it's a higher grade generation than simply using off the shelf CD-Rs and a consumer grade burner. Plus, you can get them ink'd on the top (whatever image you want).

 Not a bad choice if people wanted to do a small run of translations or such (non-profit, just the total cost of the smallest batch split between members).