CD-ROM drive.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Attempting to fix an Audio Solutions CD jukebox. Basically a CD player with an HD that you can rip CDs to. HD and CD look to be standard PC parts.

It the CD player drawer which is sticking. Won't open (from closed) on the button or close fully if you open it manually. But does motor most of the way to either. Cleaned it up and re-greased the bits which were greased before, and the drive belt looks OK, but still the same.

The drive is a Lite-On LTN 529S, IDE.

I've got a couple of spare ancient CD drives that still work, but they are longer than this one so won't fit. But the one I tried (a Packard Bell) did work OK with it, so it may be near any CD-ROM would be OK.

The older drive is about 210mm long. The Lite-On about 180mm.

Looked on Ebay, and can find a new Lite-On in the US, but going to be too expensive.

Anyone guess at an equivalent that is going to be cheaper? Is there an easy way of identifying between the long and short drives in an Ebay ad by description?

[Adrian Caspersz]

Google image search for "CDROM drive IDE"

Should be able to eyeball one that is slightly longer than it's width.

Ah OK, I'm bored....

Specs Lite-on were a known OEM for Sony.

[John Rumm]

Don't know about ebay, but checking the specs on the drive makers web site will usually tell you.

FYI the dimensions of an Asus DRW-24D5MT DVD Re-Writer, SATA, 24x are listed as 146 x 170 x 41 mm - (WxDxH). I usually pay about a tenner for those. They also rip audio very quickly - typically doing a whole CD in under 3 mins.

[John Rumm]

Oops, missed the bit about being IDE...

I have a LG CD/RW model CGE 8527B from c. 2005 you can have if you want. Its 170mm deep.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Not certain a R/W drive would work with the inbuilt software driver? I've no idea how old the unit is.

[dennis]

And use a new sata drive.

[David]

Bugger.

Just slung a couple of IDE CD drives for recycling yesterday because nobody these days would want one.

Sod's Law, innit?

Cheers

Dave R

[John Rumm]

IIUC RW drives look exactly the same from a SW point of view - the command set for CD read is just a subset of those that also write. I am happy to lob it your way to try it if you want?

[John Miller]

I've got an even older Relisys DVD ROM drive from 2002 lying about doing nothing. Taken out of a previous PC and replaced with a R/W as I remember. It was working OK when removed so should be OK. It is 198mm to front of facia. You can have that one as well if it is any use to you. John M

[Brian Gaff]

For me its not the length but some imponderable issues that give me a pain in the neck. Putting aside the serial and ide versions for the moment as there are e conversion boards. I find two things. Some older CD/DVD drives cannot actually write to blank CDS currently on offer from Maxell at all, but other drives do, so it has to be internal firmware related. Second. Two very new drives Sartor produce discs very unlikely to work in other drives especially if they are audio cds. Its as if the data is not really there strongly enough and trying to skip tracks or read the index of said discs gives a searching error after a few seconds. Sometimes writing at very slow speeds can help. Older drives are much better at this writing. When you say length. I find it hard to believe the designers of this device did not allow for standard variations in length. My pc of several years ago simply has slots for the screws to allow it to slide back to look level.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Yeah which is unplayabeble afterwards....

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

The daft thing is that I have a Panasonic dvd ripper to usb stick machine I bought from Amazon at under 40 quid. it does work but to me is a little limited in what it can do. Its a fair cd player, but has that annoyance of not playing classical cds with track markers without a glitch at every one. Rubbish firmware? Brian

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Thanks John. I've got a couple of CD R/W drives I could try to make sure the system works before putting you to the trouble. ;-)

[Chris Hogg]

Did Newton suffer from it? :-)

[GB]

In case it's any help, I'm happy to let you have a Lite-On CD-RW/DVD-ROM that's also 170mm long. It was working when removed...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Thanks for the offer. I was basing my idea that only a CD-ROM would work on my ancient Acorns, which had them as standard. To use a R-W - or a DVD type involved new software.

But it's got a bit more curious. The original drive has an open/close switch on it. Not used, as there is a separate button for this which presumably does it via software. If I use this switch, it opens and closes just fine.

[John Rumm]

No, its a feature of many bits of playback software. Some can manage gapless playback like later versions of Winamp, and also a program called foobar2000. Apparently it should also be in VLC version 4 when that is out of beta.

[Vir Campestris]

I'd have gone with rubbish firmware.

Compressed music has to be a whole number of blocks. Good software would move the track marker a tad to make sure there isn't a bit of silence between the files.

Andy

[Andrew Gabriel]

A very common fault at Repair Cafes.

No 1 cause of this is the grease has gone sticky, sometimes combined with dust too, but hopefully you replaced all that.

No 2 cause is the tray motor has a burned out a pole, and when it stops in certain positions, it can't start again or has very little torque. Measure motor continuity whilst slowly turning it through one turn.

I diagnosed one of these just recently, and we had no spares, but afterwards the owner found another drive with an identical motor at home and swapped it across successfully.

[Adrian Caspersz]

I have the opposite.

A Rotel CD player with a tray that behaves like the cash register in Open All Hours.

It has character, so I've not bothered fixing it ;)