Hey guys,
I've been doing some pretty involved research on this subject (my oldest TG-CD has had this problem since early 2001...and now my newer one is starting to flake out too!). Here's what I can tell you:
Despite what I initially thought, both motors are OK. I took them out of the assembly and applied power, and both spun quite freely.
I applied a bit of red "Mystery Grease" I stole from work (seriously...I think it's Aeroshell #65 or some nonsense) to the poly gears that drive the laser, as well as to the guide bar that the laser itself travels on.
Then, just for the hell of it, I reapplied power to the motor (while installed). It drove the laser for about a second, and then stopped dead.
Upon closer examination, I discovered that the source of the stoppage was a spot on one of the drive gears where two teeth had broken off. It was just sort of "bound up" like that.
I began turning the drive gears by hand, and in doing so I stripped EVERY TOOTH off of the busted gear. All the other gears were fine.
I reassembled the TG-CD completely, and put in an audio CD and pressed "Play". This time, I could hear the laser motor turning speedily along, with nothing to mesh with.
I'd say given the fact that we all have TG-CD's and are all having the same symptom, it's pretty likely that you also have one or two busted teeth on your drive gear.
Now, what's the solution?
-I don't think lubing would do an immense amount of good, but if you use a PROPER LUBE for plastic/poly it certainly couldn't do any harm (I add this emphasis because I suspect the red grease may have helped make the gear even more brittle).
-I have been looking for a mechanical fix for the TG-CD. I don't know how to go about replacing just the one stripped gear (they all seem mounted to the shafts pretty securely...how would I reattach them without slippage?), so my solutions all tend to gravitate toward:[ul][li]finding a SCSI-based NEC CD-ROM drive from the same general era and gutting it[/li][li]buying a PC-Engine CD on schnebay and harvesting just the CD/laser motor assembly[/li][li]finding somekind of generic "CD player rebuild kit" online...I don't hold out much hope, though. [/li][/ul]
Honestly, I'd always rather use NEC parts for a project like this, and for the relatively low price for a PC Engine CD-ROM unit ($50-60 last time I checked) and the little labor involved, I think I'm gonna go with the second choice.
But, as I've said in my other thread, I'll keep y'all updated on my progress. Just bear in mind that the Chrastmas shopping season is all up ons, so I can't be spending as much time and money on this as I'd like.
