Help with Duo Lens Adjustment Laser Calibration Shenanigans?

[Mortis]

Hey all,

I'm afraid this is an old topic but it wouldn't hurt with some additional insight Me and my brother recently had some slight reading problems both with CD-Rs (Verbatims were recommended somewhere, our experience is they don't read at all, even Memorex read better) and original games on our Duo-R. We thus decided to gamble and take the HOP-M3 lens replacement route to see if the lens was to blame.

The symptoms mostly include booting problems and lost audio tracks - nothing severe most of the time. Sometimes games fail to boot but not very often. Still, we thought it'd be useful to try the replacement. The procedure itself was fairly smooth (though long and tedious, what with a lot of plugging and unplugging, and the plugs being extremely tight - it was good having two guys for the job), but the new lens just didn't find anything to read.

We tried various things (different brands of CD-R, original games, rubbing alcohol, confirming plugs etc.), but we just never got the new lens working. I don't know much about the HOP-M3 but for now I'm inclined to think the issue is related to the reading adjustment mechanism. If we got it correctly, it's the bottom-right front white rotating mechanism pictured here (sorry 'bout the blurry photo):



Is this correct? First we tried rotating it to match the angle of the older lens, then we tried various positions towards each end (leftwards, rightwards). The reading sound is definitely different depending on the angle of the mechanism, but we couldn't pinpoint the proper one. Perhaps we're on the wrong tracks altogether!

Thus I'm very much interested in knowing if anyone has more in-depth experience of the procedure! Anything will help, thanks beforehand!

[chop5]

i never fiddled with the alignment pot. But when i started using cd player lazers i thought i would have to but they all worked the same without touching the pot. So chances are the pot alignment isn't the problem.
Check the new lazer that its not damaged. check the lens under a strong light. even use a small pocket lazer pointer and shine it on the lens in the dark for any blemish or hairline crack. Man i wish you could plug that laser in a cd player to see if it works. But even without further testing id think about sending it back to get a replacement. Did you buy it at electornix.com?
The only other thing that might be wrong is that pesky laser cover thingy. if you don't have it on just right the lazer will rub against it and wont read disc's. Try a game without it on.
If it works we can discuss later how to get the laser cover thingy back on just right.
And double check all the wire connections to the lazer. Undo and put them back on tight. there hard to get back on there. I had to let my nails grow so i can remove them and snap them back in.



I was reading through search about cdrs not working well on a duo. Before i saw this i thought the main problem i had with my cdrs on my duo is i always have trouble finding a good iso to burn. I would always find crappy ones with bad audio. I made 4 diffrent cdrs of dracula x with diffrent isos till i got one that worked ok. But its still a crappy iso. 75% of the iso's out there are crap.

[Mortis]

Thanks for the tip - I think we'll just try reinstalling the lens at some point. I can't say I see anything wrong with it. I'll clean it up with rubbing alcohol real carefully and make sure the wires are all tight. We actually tried it without the cover, too. It wasn't that. Since the old lens works fairly well these days there's less need to replace it, but I'd sleep a lot better knowing there's an all-new lens doing the reading though.

About the CD-Rs - there are a lot of urban myths (like them wearing the lens out) moving on regarding the Duos. In any case, we only use lossless and confirmed ISOs - I'll have none of that mp3/ogg/mpc -encoded rubbish that still permeates the net. You're totally right about it, it's probably more than 75% of the ISOs that are nothing but garbage.

Anyway, that's fairly off-topic. I'm still very interested in hearing if anyone's ever adjusted their lens!

[Mortis]

We've had some skittery behavior with the old lens now. It does a rapid clicking sound a lil' too often and actually got stuck to the rightmost side once as well. After that we freaked out and cleaned & lubricated the support bars and it seems better off (we were able to play a few games after that!). I'm suspecting some kind of misplacement issue with the gear, as if the motor expected the lens to be at a place and keeps on returning to the wrong position. Just a guess, though.

I'm also sending the new but clearly non-functional HOP-M3 (it just ain't working, it didn't work outta the box and it ain't working now, plus we've treated it like a lil' baby) back to Electronix. I hate to say, the service I received from them while buying the product was excellent and fast, but now that I'm returning it, it's taken them days to get any kind of response and I've gotten a series of very slow-witted responses to my own e-mails. I hope I get to turn it in fast for a replacement so that we can experiment more with the lens situation 

It'd be fun to get some proper play time out of the machine - I've noticed that a lot of PC Engine fans have woes with their systems and eventually get very little play time out of their machines, instead spending a lot of time and money on repairs and fixes. It's quite interesting

[Mortis]

Ah! Miracles! We received a replacement lens for our replacement lens (phew) a few days ago from Electronix (Boy, they were really fast with replacing it! Under two weeks from here to there to back here) and we installed it today. It was dead tight compared to the two other lenses we have, and strangely enough, came in a completely different package than the last one. Additionally, the lens adjuster was glued tight like the one that originally came with our Duo-R.

Bottom line: It's working great (   ) on the few games we had time to test, perfectly really. It makes a completely different read sound, too, precise and sharp.

I'm so delighted, we've been messing with this thing for months now. It's such a shame the lens that we first received from Electronix was faulty from the get-go - I mean, beginner and all, you really start freaking out inside when things don't work when they should.

[termis]

Good to hear you got it going again 

[FM-77]

Cool dood, now you can play all the Final Fantasy XII you want!