Adventures of buying a Broken PCEngine and Briefcase from ebay

[papa_november]

Have the symptoms changed at all?

Make absolutely sure your CDs are good. It's always handy to have one original (as in, not burned) CD game (no matter how shitty) laying around for testing. I learned that the hard way a few months back.

[pceslayer]

Ive only tried originals... This CDROM unit is going to be the death of me 



In the meantime I got a broken PCE Duo off ebay for $73 shipped(damn shipping was $48). Auction said it was junk and the laser was bad.

Noticed the CD spindle was pushed down below the laser assembly, so I pulled it off and re-seated it and now it works. It still doesn't read discs 100% though... It seems to have trouble reading audio tracks past a certain point on a disc.

In the end it took longer to get the damn screws off the case then it did to get it working.

[papa_november]

That's pretty odd. Are you sure the drive mechanism is clean?

Hose off the motherboard and replace the SMT capacitors with tantalums until stuff starts working.

[Duo_R]

how about replacing the laser unit assembly on the broken duo.

[pceslayer]

how about replacing the laser unit assembly on the broken duo.

Well after messing around with it for a while this morning... It only has the issue with original pressed discs

I burned a few backups of the same game and no issue....

the original discs are flawless, not even a speck of dust on them.

Does it to Audio CD's too... where a backup of the exact same disc plays flawlessly.

[papa_november]

I can safely say that nobody has ever seen this problem before. Usually the reverse happens.

[Duo_R]

sounds like the laser pot got messed with. I have heard of this happening on other systems like PS1.

[pceslayer]

sounds like the laser pot got messed with. I have heard of this happening on other systems like PS1.

As far as I can tell the console had never been opened.

Ah well, I can live with a duo that only reads CDR's... It'll keep me from scratching up my originals  :-"

[Duo_R]

Ask Snow Kitty, he seams to know a little on the laser adjustments. DO NOT attempt to do it without getting some knowledge. But I think ur laser just needs adjusting.