kgallen

Can you get a disc into it (without forcing it!)? With one in can you play it? Daft question possibly, but you're talking about the eject motor. (There is a spindle motor and a sled motor too.) Kevin

(Off topic - I was totally amazed to find a standard remote fits and works in the NF610, which has some weird shaped RM bit of the combined 3.5mm jack/RM contacts for the radio remote. Clever them Japanese folk.)

I don't know. But I would agree that 9 times out of 10 it will be a silly/simple fault. Need a bit more info about the ghost that's given up. Usual stuff: what works, what doesn't, what display/LEDs, what noises.

Ha! We'll be 'round your house with pitch forks if you talk like that around here! :-D

Indeed, what I meant was "the information the main CPU needs to use the BD board is contained within the EEPROM", which is what allows us to plug-and-play drives. i.e. we don't need to go in and change and settings or reconfigure the main board when we transplant in a drive from another machine. I don't have a memory map of what is in the EEPROM, I just know we can "plug-and-play" - or if nothing else we seem to be able to do this without damage! Certainly the main CPU reads this EEPROM over I2C early on in boot (I've seen this on my protocol 'scope on my forever-faulty E10). @NGY your information and experience is invaluable, reliable and well-founded. Please "split hairs" (indeed I want you to) whenever needed (at least on my posts!!!) - this is a learning experience for me! :-)

Done. Thank you!!! :-)

Mmmm, probably unlikely. The MD unit doesn't use a "standard" interface like IDE or similar. You'd probably need to design a circuit (even a small FPGA) to interface something like an SPDIF serial stream into the SD card interface. Not beyond the wit of man at all, but not trivial. The other option would be to use something like a Raspberry Pi. If you are into electronics you could take some tips from circuits for "SCMS copy killer" for interpreting the SPDIF stream. Although of course you'd need to be able to do the reverse too - read your audio data from the SD card and create an SPDIF stream. This would of course be a fully proprietary solution though - you could only read and write your SD cards on this machine! We're not taking wav files here, although using a Pi might give you more processing options to consider that! Kevin

I've got a 520 and a 530 (amonst a lot of others!). The 520 was my first MD "baby" (receipt attached, oops, sorry it's so big!). The 530 was purchased a couple of years back from eBay with the aim of using MD again at my AmDram society (which, due to the 530 issue, got me into Tascam MD-350, then Tascam MD-CD1, then Sony MDS-E12 and E10... which then got me into 440 and 480... which then got me into... the rest of the list on my profile!!!). Excellent! As @NGY says, the BD board (EEPROM) holds this data - along with (I believe, possibly disputed) - the Iop settings for the laser. This is why you can swap drives between machines and the main PCB CPU knows how to configure the BD.

Hi chaps, Thank you both for your quick responses. Thanks @blixabloxa for the manual link. I do have the SM from Elektrotanya, but I will compare the one you provided as often there are several versions in circulation with different information or quality of pictures etc. So thanks! Schematics would be the key! @NGY thanks for your insightful investigation into the VFD, much appreciated! My MD-801R was bought "spares-probably-not-repairs" (I added that last bit!) just to have a play about with. It has been used as a donor deck to repair another (presumably), so is missing some parts, like this DC-DC converter (in general it's not in too bad shape). As we've seen, there are no schematics although at least a parts list which states U503 as a DC-DC. However there are no other specs or pinouts. Through tracing the PCB, I've worked out the pinout (for anyone that cares, assume you're looking down at a DIP8, then pin1=out, pin4=in, pin8=0V). The input is from the raw rectified/smoothed DC supply and I measured at 16.7V. The output of the DC-DC has a smoothing cap but it's in reverse polarity (cap+ to 0V rail, cap- to DC-DC output), hence concluding the output was probably negative. I found a Facebook repair post on this component. Not many details but one photo was annotated with "29V". Hence my two proposals of 17V and 30V and the likelyhood these supplies were negative with respect to the 0V rail. I've ordered a range of small DC-DC modules - both Boost types (thinking +17V -> +30V) and also some Buck-Boost inverter modules, so I can do both +17V to -24V and +17V to -17V (at least). So the info on brightness for -15V through -30V, and the datasheet picture you found is much appreciated. I did not want to blow up the VFD on the first attempt! I suspect this machine will still be a little poorly, but getting the VFD working will be a step forward in diagnosing the next fault. At the moment it will accept a disc, but does not spin it up and hence not read the TOC. So once the VFD is working I can take a look at the drive behaviour. Onwards, fellow MD-ers! Cheers, Kevin

Funnily enough I’ve now got myself an MD-801R to play with too that is in need of some attention (to say the least!). Schematics seem hard to come by but if anyone happens to have a set... failing that any details on the VFD DC-DC converter - is it negative output and what voltage? (Options are probably -17V or -30V). Thanks!

Beauty! (Love my 520... did I say...!)

Yea it’s a nice unit. But if you paid the price for a working unit then that is what you should get. In the right hands I don’t see why it wouldn’t be fixable but that is of course a risk that you don’t want to be taking if you paid a premium price for it. Kevin

We look forward to them! Maybe they will ease our pain with these troublesome machines!

@NGY I feel like we're entering some world of voodoo electronics here. Have you been on the Unicum? :-P

The key question is, is it safe on plastics? A quick google and TF2 is a lubricant for metal bearings, suggested use for bicycles. It’s ‘a packing type grease for bearings’. Sorry I’m not sure about this one.

I just love this, that you can have an MD in the loft you forgot about (assume it wasn’t donated by the previous owner of your house!). Nothing of remotely such interest in my loft :-(

Quite right sorry. I’d intended to write 10uF 4V. That “22” looks a little weird. But as you say in the likely application they are doing the same job.

I think the former is aluminium electrolytic and the latter tantalum. Probably a bulk supply decap so their other electrical differences are less critical. Otherwise as @NGY says. Look different values though, 39uF (16V) vs 22uF (4V).

You can transfer over the chassis straps from the 980 drive to the 480 if you want. I don't have those on most of my machines (never there not that I've lost them). At some point Sony must have decided they wanted another common return path. The other 0V returns are on the ribbon cables and by that they are a relatively high impedance connection. That is always a bad situation for a reference connection. So I guess they added those flying leads to try and create a better return paths for the various currents. There are of course motors on the drive which are relatively electrically noisy. You don't want that electrical noise getting into your control systems or audio paths, so having a low impedance return path can help a lot there. I don't have many machines (even my "Pro" E10 and E12) with these chassis straps. I do have them in a couple of the later-but-cheaper 4xx models I bought for spares (then got them working with a belt replacement!). Sorry, went on a bit there! As far as I know the drive from the 480 is identical to the drive from the 980. I'd have to check the SM but they are the same series (note this wasn't always true in the early days, a JE330 is like a JE520 not a JE530). Play with the 980 drive in the 480 - rather break the 480 than the 980! Worth putting a label on the good one, you don't want to "investigate" the good one and break that. My suggestion - look for something silly/trivial. Do a thorough visual inspection of the broken drive. Compare carefully to the good one. Check they have the same springs, that the gears seem to be "at rest" in the same positions, that other movable parts look like they "rest" in the same position (rotation/linear position).

If you take due care, that should be very straightforward to do. I've lost track of how many times I've moved MDM7-series drives between my various E10, E12, JE440, JE480 machines trying to debug an issue! When you do, the machine should flash "Initialise" on the display a couple of times when you first power it up. Mains lead unplugged of course for this and avoid getting your hands all over the PCBs. Make sure you use the rubber mounts and shouldered screws from the host machine in the host machine. As the 480 and 980 are probably much the same inside, for now lets say you use the ribbons from the 980 and just move the drive. That way, if it works we know the ribbons from the previously-faulty 980 are indeed in working order. Good luck! Kevin

For plastic gears, the usual recommendation is Dow Corning Molykote EM-30L synthetic grease. Officially this is sold in 1kg tins that cost hundreds of pounds/dollars. However you can usually find a local eBayer who has decanted some to small amounts, say 10 grammes, that can be bought for a small number of pounds/dollars. You only need a tiny amount, I'm still using the grease off the lid of my 10g pot! As mentioned elsewhere on the forum, make sure you clean of any old grease and apply the tiniest amount required using a cocktail stick or similar. This grease can also be used in our applications for metal to metal, since none of the metal parts in our machines are running at high temperatures under high loads (an MD drive is not some huge industrial machine!). @NGY may have other suggestions, he's clearly an "old hand" at this lark!

As @NGY says. One thing to AVOID is acetone/nail varnish remover as even though that is a solvent/de-greaser, it degrades lots of plastics.

The drives I believe are interchangeable in these two variants of the same product. However the ribbon cable result is interesting. Hopefully you didn't overly handle the exposed connections at the end of the ribbons when doing this. Unless you do some crazy static electricity dance first, being sensible here shouldn't result in any ESD damage. But there are CMOS-based chips at either end (on the drive and main PCB) and some connections do go directly to inputs (albeit usually via series termination resistors) so we should take reasonable care not to cause irreversible damage to the devices. Given this has changed the prognosis, maybe we should explore this a little more for oxidised terminals. Probably at this point lots of other Forum members are slapping their foreheads, saying "oh gawd he's off on his ribbon cable thing again". But anyway, if you do have any isopropyl alcohol and some cotton buds, with both ends removed, maybe you could give the exposed contacts a clean. Also if you can do this without creasing them, I'd insert and withdraw them a couple of times into the sockets on the drive and main board. We're trying here to scrape through any oxidation that might have built up. Let's not kid ourselves here, most of these machines are around 20 years old if not more. However what we don't want to do is make that machine any worse, so please take care. If you have an antistatic wrist strap or can grasp for a few moments a grounded piece of equipment (like the case of a desktop PC- a non painted part) then all the better. So long as you don't have any existing un-tripped earth faults in your house that is!

You do know at this point I'm going to suggest re-seating the two ribbon cables don't you. Well, it brought my 530 back from the C13! Not convinced it's this but stranger things have happened if there is nothing else obviously bust!

This may be an "old" thread, but I'm "Liking" it because I like the simplicity of the diagnosis and the fix. We all need to remember that "laser broken" is not the first thought we should EVER have! Good one @NGY, thanks for the cross-reference link that got me here. (And also, as my 520 was my first "MD love" I'm happy that this 520 is also still alive and well...)