The Search for the turbo cd gear

[SignOfZeta]

One time, at least 8 years ago, some chick emailed me completely out of the blue and asked me if I still had my Sony D-66 Discman. I told her that I did and that it still worked, but it skipped easy now and the original NiCad battery was (obviously) junk by this point. She said she didn't care about any of that and just wanted the thing, so I sold it to her for $30 or something like that.

I later decided that the only way she, a random stranger, could have known about me owning one of these (since 1991) was because I mentioned it in a conversation on the Minidisc Mailing List. We were talking about how "new" Sony stuff (new in 2000) was junk and the old stuff was more reliable. I had to warrantee a Discman I bought that year whearas the old D-66 was still going.

So, could she have wanted my D-66 just for a gear inside? Would it be for a TG-16 CD or something else? Honestly, I have no idea and I wouldn't bet on it. I will say though that if you come across a D-66 at the Salvation Army store...buy it so we can know. I haven't seen one in ages.

[nikdog]

awesome

[Official Ninja]

One time, at least 8 years ago, some chick emailed me completely out of the blue and asked me if I still had my Sony D-66 Discman. I told her that I did and that it still worked, but it skipped easy now and the original NiCad battery was (obviously) junk by this point. She said she didn't care about any of that and just wanted the thing, so I sold it to her for $30 or something like that.

I later decided that the only way she, a random stranger, could have known about me owning one of these (since 1991) was because I mentioned it in a conversation on the Minidisc Mailing List. We were talking about how "new" Sony stuff (new in 2000) was junk and the old stuff was more reliable. I had to warrantee a Discman I bought that year whearas the old D-66 was still going.

So, could she have wanted my D-66 just for a gear inside? Would it be for a TG-16 CD or something else? Honestly, I have no idea and I wouldn't bet on it. I will say though that if you come across a D-66 at the Salvation Army store...buy it so we can know. I haven't seen one in ages.

The old Discman units with line out on the back, are sought after by audio people. I keep a D-11 hooked up to my system all the time. Nice and warm sounding player through the line out. I also keep a D-34 to use with headphones.

[Official Ninja]

Yesterday, I cut the mold walls. A whole bunch of them to try different molds.
My brother is going to assemble them and make a 1st attempt at casting.
I'll post here with the results. Shouldn't be long now.....

[chriscomputers]

Just thought I'd share this. I got lucky. Went to good will today and found an old Sony D-3 CD player. The lens is a Kss-160A not sure if that is compatible with a Turbo CD. However, the lens motor is the FF-050SH and it also has the special middle gear for Turbo CDs that always break.

[Twood1130]

Did the gear work in the system?

[kid_rondeau]

There's one on eBay now for $35. They sure look like they could be the same internally.

[Marll]

Any more news on this?

[Official Ninja]

We havent done much. My brother who will be doing the molding is changing jobs right now. This means we wont work together anymore. Kinda sux. Also he has a 1yr old daughter who is very awesome, but very time consuming. :-)

Soon we will get to it. I didn't go away.

[Charlie]

As any FYI, the D-3, the D-10, the D-30 and the D-100 all have the same drive mechanism.  Probably other models, also.   This might widen the search parameters and result in more possible sources, assuming the gears match the TURBO CD in the first place, of course.

As a favor, can someone publish a full set of pictures of the drive mechanism, including a close-up of the gear drive train?  And, is the drive in the TURBO CD different from the drive in the PCENGINE DUO?

Thanks
Charlie

[vestcoat]

What?  A free gear with every copy of Mysterious Song!?!  Awesome!

[Official Ninja]

Did the gear work in the system?

I just got a Discman D-3 from ebay today.
The Gear in the D-3 Discman is not the same as the gear in the TG-CD. The center hole is slightly too small.
It goes on the shaft in the TGCD unit but the motor can not spin it because it is too tight.
I'm going to bring the gear to work with me tomorrow and see if I can use a small reamer to slightly open the gears hole.

[Official Ninja]

I was able to get the gear from the Discman d-3 to work, but it is not the right size gear. It is close enough to work but the assembly makes lots of noise. The d-3 gear is all around smaller than the one from the tg-cd. Looks like the only real usable part from the d-3 is the motor.

I'm convinced that the warm up issue is the FSxxxxx motor. When I tried the laser sled from my tg-cd in the nec pc-cdrom it would not start still having the warm up issue. So it has nothing to do with the units pcb. I changed the motor with that from the one in the d-3 and it ran fine.

[Game-Tech.US]

I have several units that have broken gears, I don't really know what the root cause was or if any of them have a warm up issue.
What I do know is the gears are busted and I need to replace them and i'm not going to try to salvage a dozen gears from old discmans.
I need a source for NEW gears!
Please don't give up on making us new gears just becuase there are other issues.

[BlueBMW]

I got a quote from one place.  WAY too much...  $75 a gear for 100 or $36 a gear for 500.