Turbo Grafx/PC engine CD Gear replacement available! $12 shipped

[Keith Courage]

It does move faster so it's going to be louder no matter what you try. Some grease may help but be careful cause I've greased some which then ended up making the movement so slow that the track would not move.

[FiftyQuid]

It does move faster so it's going to be louder no matter what you try. Some grease may help but be careful cause I've greased some which then ended up making the movement so slow that the track would not move.

I know we spoke before and I think you mentioned to use lithium grease sparingly.  I was just curious if Drakon and Lost Monkey had similar noise issues.  Right now it's disassembled again (LED fix), but when it was together it was loud enough to scare me into thinking something was going to break when it tracked.  Maybe the best thing to do is record the sound and post it here.  I guess I just want to know if my new normal is similar to everyone else's new normal.

[Keith Courage]

I know the sound you speak of. If it happens at all(some drives don't) it would be during the load up on a RPG game of some sort. The lens moves very far back and forth when loading up the beginning cinema scenes. The sound is the lens hoping around on the track just for a few moments from moving too fast to the stopping point. It is not the gears grinding and shouldn't cause any future issues from what I can tell. The reason there was originally a 3rd gear in there was to slow the speed down. Unfortunately no one has yet to find an exact gear replacement so until then this is the best we have. Maybe someone knows a way to reduce the voltage to the motor to give it less juice?


Also, 50% of the time you can tighten up the tension on the plastic piece that holes the lens to the track and it will fix the too fast skip issue. However it doesn't always work if the lens motor is too strong. Here is a picture of the part I am speaking of and how I bent it down ever so slightly. Do not bend it too much or you could break it and the only way I know of to get another one is to buy a doner CD drive. A very small bend can take care of the issue.





To conclude, if you only here the loud skip once or twice when playing a game I would just leave it alone. I don't see it wearing out parts anytime soon since the sound is produced by the lens hoping off the track for a moment and not produced by teeth grinding together.

[thesteve]

the motor voltage is ramped (starts low, and increases till the required results are achieved)
just had one here that would require a higher voltage to get the motor to move, then overshoot causing track jumps.
the solution was to replace the motor.

[Lost Monkey]

I know we spoke before and I think you mentioned to use lithium grease sparingly.  I was just curious if Drakon and Lost Monkey had similar noise issues.  Right now it's disassembled again (LED fix), but when it was together it was loud enough to scare me into thinking something was going to break when it tracked.  Maybe the best thing to do is record the sound and post it here.  I guess I just want to know if my new normal is similar to everyone else's new normal.

Mine is loud at certain times as well, and as KC mentioned - I think it is sometimes moving too fast and missing tracks.  I could not get it to load the Sherlock Holmes 2 introduction - it would just get stuck on this horrible sounding groove where I could here that the sled was moving all the way from one end of the disc, resetting and doing it again.  When it does load, which it 99% of the time, it is noticeably faster.

[Drakon]

It's louder but when the lid is closed I still barely hear mine.  Seems to load faster too now.

[FiftyQuid]

It's louder but when the lid is closed I still barely hear mine.  Seems to load faster too now.

Mine is definitely noticeable.  It has that "What the hell was that?!" effect whenever I have someone else in the room and it tracks.  I'll report back after I give my spindle a good lube job.  Er... get your minds out of the gutter people! 

[Keith Courage]

Lost Monkey

Your drive either needs the potentiometers adjusted or a new lens if it is getting stuck at a certain spot of a game when loading. The gear is not the issue with your sherlock holmes not loading correctly. I have had to change the lens on a few drives that did this exact thing that you are speaking of and it fixed the problem. The faulty lens also would get stuck loading dynastic hero and go back and forth as well so maybe check that game too. However, the faulty lens still worked fine for most other games.

[Drakon]

Okay I did some more playing and yeah it's loud.  But it works perfectly so I don't care!

[Lost Monkey]

Lost Monkey

Your drive either needs the potentiometers adjusted or a new lens if it is getting stuck at a certain spot of a game when loading. The gear is not the issue with your sherlock holmes not loading correctly. I have had to change the lens on a few drives that did this exact thing that you are speaking of and it fixed the problem. The faulty lens also would get stuck loading dynastic hero and go back and forth as well so maybe check that game too. However, the faulty lens still worked fine for most other games.

Lost Monkey

Your drive either needs the potentiometers adjusted or a new lens if it is getting stuck at a certain spot of a game when loading. The gear is not the issue with your sherlock holmes not loading correctly. I have had to change the lens on a few drives that did this exact thing that you are speaking of and it fixed the problem. The faulty lens also would get stuck loading dynastic hero and go back and forth as well so maybe check that game too. However, the faulty lens still worked fine for most other games.

I plan to do some adjusting this weekend, the drive went from not spinning to working with a couple of tiny adjustments, and I left it at that.  Hopefully some more small adjustments will do the trick.

[Lost Monkey]

After some more adjustments, my drive will now load the intro on Sherlock Holmes 2.  I don't have an original Dynastic Hero to try, but I plan on picking up the J-SCD again soon.  Can't remember why I sold mine in the first place... I loved that game...

[Drakon]

I found out that with my cheap cdrs the system with all games would eventually glitch and crash.  With taiyo yudens all games have so far been 100% problem free.

[FiftyQuid]

@Keith, just wanted you to know I added some white lithium grease to the spindle of my CD unit.  Not a ton, but I did put a tiny bit in each thread.  After sealing up the unit and docking it into the TG the noise was gone!!!

Looks like you were right about adding some grease.  Not that I ever doubted you, but I just wanted to let you know.  Sorry it took so long to confirm, but I finally replaced my busted LED display as well!  All things are coming up FiftyQuid. 

Thank you again for all your help getting me up and running. 

[Drakon]

I finally found a game that didn't agree with this mod, that game is art of fighting.  When the game tried to load the continue screen after losing a match it would go in an infinite loop of trying to load and failing and trying over and over and over.  All other cd games ran fine.  I tried adjusting the speed pot like keith courage suggests at the end of his guide.  After messing with the speed pot for a while I managed to get art of fighting running just fine.  Thanks again to keith courage for including that small but VERY important piece of information.  Even though most of the time you don't need to adjust that pot, it's good to know that very rarely you will need to.  If I hadn't known about that pot I'm sure it would have taken me much longer to fix my gear replaced pce cd drive.

[Frank_fjs]

Yeah, AoF is probably a good test candidate as it seems to load a lot of data.