TAM CD repair.

[falen5]

Hello to all the Mac fans from Ireland.

Been gone for 2 or 3 years now. Its my eyesight. It has gone so bad I just can solder, or work on boards anymore - not that I ever had a clue what I was doing anyway.

Big hello to technight and everyone else who helped me so much on here.

Anyway

I took down my TAM to sell it. Only to find (or rediscover) that the CD player was not working too good. I just fixed it and its working perfectly.

Problem : You put in a cd, close the door, the cd begins to spin up and then the laser starts making all kinds of crazy sounds, clicks, grinds, etc etc  for ages and ages. Eventually the cd icon appears on the desktop , but you still cant do anything - playing audio cd results in long pauses and noise in the audio.

Having cleaned the laser lense i discounted that.

You can fool the tam into thinking the door is closed by pressing the little silver switch on the left side of the bay, towards the top.  This starts the laser off... moving, focusing, left , right, up , down etc etc. That seemed to look Ok to me.

Then i put in a cd and did the same. CD spins up and then the laser starts its wild movement all over the place.

Still could not see what the problem was.

So I started to wonder about the height of the CD from the laser.

HERES HOW I FIXED IT.

I carefully removed the black , plastic, center spindal that the cd sits onto. I did this using 2 small screwdrivers, levering from opposite sides - carefully and gently and it pops off.

I then cleaned the old rubber that had basically liquified ( its the face that the CD sits onto) - i thought this old rubber was causing the cd to "sit" to high above the laser.

Put it back and tried again , but it still did not work.

I carefully looked at the gap between the cd and the cd bay and decided there was a small amount of room to "lower" the cd closer to the laser.

So I took off the spindle again, got some fine sandpaper on a flat surface, sat the spindle on the sandpaper, cd side facing up, and removed just a tiny amount of plastic.

The point is to try get the cd a tiny bit closer to the laser.

Well feck me blue and call me a blind paddy, i put the spindle back and my CD player is working perfectly.

Dont know if that has been discovered before - I just discovered it for myself and thought Id share it for anyone else with the same problem.

God Bless people

 

[Byrd]

Hi falen5, welcome back, I enjoyed your last involvement with the site trying to resurrect that FrankenAppleII!

Interesting about the degradation of rubber in the TAM CD drive - I've an Apple PowerCD which I reckon has a similar issue, I'm yet to pull it apart but it's very "gritty" and doesn't spin the CD smoothly, attempting to read CDs but never qutie getting there.

Of course if you can avoid using the TAM CD drive I'd do so - it's a picky device that never plays well with burnt CDs or any with minor scratches.

 

[falen5]

Hi Byrd.

I though the 'gooy' rubber ( if its even rubber) may of offset the cd's rotation into a  wobbleas it spun  - thats why i took out the spindle - just to clean all the goop off. Just used a tissue and some heavy rubbing to get it all off

But when i put it back on it still didnt work - so i dont know if that was the problem.

It was only when i sanded of a TINY bit from the spindle that it worked.

When i first tried it I had the door switch held so I could see the cd spin up. I didnt push the spindle all the way in - as it tried to read it was the usual crazy movement of the read head - So as it was spinning i used my thump and index finger to "flick" at the center of the cd , to push it on a bit more. The more I flicked/lowered the spindle height the less crazy movement - kept going until it was reading no problem

bejasus  im delighted with meself!!! - blind as a bat and figured it out

weh hey!!

Loved that crazy hacked apple II. I never finished it. I got it to work with an apple Iie board. I never figured out the mad old massive hard drive - but I managed to figure out most of its features i think.

 

[CC_333]

blind as a bat

How are you blind? Near? Far? Both??

Don't glasses help??? Given the sudden onset of the problem, have you considered cataracts as a possible cause? I had a friend who, like you, was practically blind and could barely see a thing, but after cataract surgery, she had near perfect sight once again, so that's something to consider...

Nevertheless, I'm glad you figured it out!

c

 

[falen5]

short sight

Overall vision going bad

driving at night is becoming more stressful

wearing glass's but not much help

old age i guess

 

[CC_333]

Hmm, sounds kinda like cataracts to me. You should probably go talk to a doctor about it and see what he/she thinks....

c