That infamous CD-ROM2 middle gear

[Frank_fjs]

Hi guys,

I have some questions re the CD-ROM2 unit's troublesome middle gear.

I have a working CD-ROM2 unit and I want to keep it that way for as long as possible. I want to grease its gears in the hope that it will help preserve them. The unit makes a fair bit of noise when seeking, mechanical noise that is, so I'm guessing my gear may already be on its way out, or is this normal behaviour?

I plan on using the REPAIR GUIDE - TG16 CD/PCE CD laser swap guide (pictorial) thread which is sticky'd in this board as a guide on disassembling my CD-ROM2 unit, unless someone can point me in the direction of a better guide. My question is, is this the gear in question (I put a little red arrow in the pic)?



Also, whilst searching this forum for information on this subject, I came across threads where people were desperately trying to find a suitable replacement gear. Failing that, there was talk of having the gear duplicated by a suitable company. Did any of this lead to anything? Or is a broken middle gear still a show stopper?

Little bit of a side note, there was a working CD-ROM2 unit sold on eBay a few weeks ago, from France. Did anyone here pick it up? I ask as I was going to buy it but when I contacted the seller to question him about it, he said that it had a broken middle gear and that he had replaced it with one that didn't quite fit. He said it made lots of noise but guaranteed that it still worked. Put me off buying it, I've always wondered if the person who did buy it knows this and if the thing is still working.

[Frank_fjs]

No replies huh, really?

I spoke to the supplier of my CD-ROM unit, they used a 'replacement' gear which explains the extra noise. It's obviously a gear that they fabricated themselves, I haven't taken the unit apart yet to check it out.

So good news is apparently it should last, bad news is it's a little noisy. Only noisy when skipping big tracks though, so not too bad. I.e. skipping from track 1 to 2 is fine, getting to the end of a CD and returning to the start is when you hear it moving.

[Necromancer]

As far as I know, nobody has sourced a replacement gear.

[chop5]

yeah thats the gear,in the middle of the 2 gears. ive been trying to make my own out of 2 other gears but  some original gears are noisy and clickety.