[OKDXA] Tales From The Bench...

[Nelson Derks]

Here's a repair tip that I wouldn't believe if I hadn't done it myself...

Picked up a nice older Toshiba DVD player at Goodwill this afternoon for
$30... Not exactly a screamer deal as you can buy cheapies all over town for
$40 new and in the box. But, this Toshiba is a mid-range model, looks good,
and gave me the 'take me home' vibe.

Fired it up to find it would play audio CD's like a champ but failed to
index DVD's something like 8 tries out of 10. Every once in a while it would
load and play OK, but it's a PITA to keep pushing the LOAD button until it
finds track zero. As you can imagine, the golden screwdriver came out for a
look inside.

It got dusted, the sled rails got a touch of oil, the two laser lenses got
cleaned (gently!) and none of this made a damn bit of difference.

Did you know that DVD's rotate much faster than CD's? Yeah, they do, and the
play head has two lasers that flip from one to the other while it's trying
to figure out if it's loading a CD or DVD. The init sequence runs the disc
at both speeds and it goes through the disc interrogation fairly quickly. I
was about to decide the DVD laser was probably at the tail end of its useful
life when I noticed that every time it changed spindle speeds the disc would
'chirp' very softly...

Did you know the spindle has a flat rubber doughnut that grips the disc?
'Spose the donut was a little glazed and the disc wouldn't come up to speed
fast enough to satisfy the init sequence due to slippage? Did the soft
'chirp' from the disc indicate a poor grip on the spindle? A light shot of
WD-40 on a Q-Tip was all I needed to clean up the rubber surface and it gave
me a little color on the Q-Tip. That told me there was some crud and/or
oxidation on the rubber surface.

Now it loads DVD's first time, every time... Plays as good as new.

In case you're wondering why I didn't use alcohol on this rubber part,
alcohol will dry out the surface and usually leaves it less 'grippy' than
before the cleaning. WD-40 tends to penetrate and rejuvenate rubber while
loosening the surface glaze. Let it dry for a bit, rub it down with a dry
Q-Tip and the rubber ends up with more grip than before. On a belt that's
contaminated with oil, alcohol or mineral spirits are the way to go, but on
dry rubber that's become glazed, try a little WD-40 instead.

- AC5UP






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