Junk PC Engine CD-ROM2 repair

[spiderlance]

Hi guys I'm new here and hoping someone can help me out. I recently bought a junk PC engine CD-ROM2 and replaced the broken middle gear. I kind of expected that to be the solution but it still isn't working. The laser moves and tries to focus and the disc spins but stops after a while and displays "Please set disc". I've tried using audio CDs and changing VR102 and VR104 but none of the combinations I've tried have worked.

Basically I'm just looking for suggestions on how to get this thing working. Thank you

[Keith Courage]

Your pots look to be in the usual working positions. However just for the sake of trying it go ahead and turn the Black 102 pot all the way to the left(counter clockwise) and see if the CD drive works. If not then put it back to the position it was in to begin with. It rarely fixes the issue but worth a try before replacing more parts.

That symptom is usually a bad CD lens and or bad capacitors. Try changing the two small rows of caps that I circled in Red. Those are typically the caps that cause CD read issues. If that doesn't fix it you may need a replacement lens. In some rare cases it's actually a bad chip on the motherboard itself but 85% of the time it's the lens or caps.

[spiderlance]

Thank you so much for the helpful guide. I'll take a look at get back to you

Edit: CD drive does not seem to work with 102 maxed out to the left