Sega CD Problem

[blackevilweredragon]

My Sega CD has a very wacky problem, hopefully someone can help me with this (OH PLEASE HELP!!)

It will play music CDs ok.
It will NOT play game CDs.  Sometimes it will (it's a 1 out of 100 tries), and when it does, it plays great...

I cleaned the laser, used an air compressor to clean it, and it STILL won't work, but still reads music CDs just fine..

What can it possibly be?  The game CDs are perfectly fine, not a single scratch on them, I even tried MANY other game CDs, along with CD-R copies of the games (which oddly fail too, but a CD-R music CD works)

and yes, it's the right region..

[NFG]

Ditch it and buy another.  It's cheaper than trying to sort out which of a thousand problems it could be.

[blackevilweredragon]

Ditch it and buy another.  It's cheaper than trying to sort out which of a thousand problems it could be.

problem:  father gave it to me as a gift..  he got it for me cause he knew it's got problems, and he knows i love fixing things...

This is what I have found out:  The motherboard looks like it had coffee spilled on it, seriously, and one of the chips in the unit, a 4-bit sony processor, had cocaine on it (for real)...

I don't want to know the history of this board, AT all..   But, would like to know how to CLEAN the coffee, and the um, coke, off of it...

[blackevilweredragon]

Found the REAL problem..  It's the socket on the motherboard, that takes in the ribbon that goes to the laser assembly..  It's warped a little, looks like it's from heat, so it's not gripping on hard enough on the ribbon, causing a VERY loose DATA line..

[kendrick]

Well done. I would never have guessed that connector as the failure point. Is that a part you can easily desolder and replace, or are you going to effect a more drastic repair?

-KKC, who has too many unfinished gaming projects in the works.

[blackevilweredragon]

I went for a more drastic repair, a permanent solid one..  I took an IDE cable, split them to give me only 22 wires (the ammount on the ribbon), and soldered them onto the board, after desoldering the old sockets both on the motherboard and the laser..

ODDLY however, now it's back to it's old self, music CDs only, and no Game CDs..  I seriously think a trace may be damaged on that area, because the drastic route didn't work..

oddly though, the laser isn't struggling to read the data CD anymore, like it did..  now the ACCESS light just goes out, blinks 4 times, goes out again, and repeats..  i think it's trying to give me an error code, but I don't know, and SEGA is of no help..

[blackevilweredragon]

i noticed something very interesting..  when i let it heat up for 4 hours, the screen will corrupt, in the BIOS..  then if i try and play a game, it plays, flakey at first, but it will play..

I am going to THINK it's a cold solder joint..  that would make sense..

[GZeus]

sega-parts will fix a sega cd for $45.
That's the price of a used one, but this was a gift, so...yeah.

[blackevilweredragon]

sega-parts will fix a sega cd for $45.
That's the price of a used one, but this was a gift, so...yeah.

this thing costed less than that...  im just gonna work on it myself..

it's a "my project", something ill probably spend 45 more days on, before just giving up

[Ismail Saeed]

Are you sure IDE cable is an exact match for the kind of cabling that used to be there?  I imagine you would be, but I'm just making sure.

[blackevilweredragon]

Are you sure IDE cable is an exact match for the kind of cabling that used to be there?  I imagine you would be, but I'm just making sure.

a wire is a wire...

and i matched the connections

1 - 1
2 - 2
~
21 - 21
22 - 22

[Ismail Saeed]

As long as you're sure.  I mean, you replaced the cable with the assumption it would be fixed, but it wasn't... my first thought was that it wasn't necessarily a fix, not that there was a problem elsewhere ;).

So after the screen HAS corrupted it'll play games?  Did I read that right?  Is it possible that even as some overheating is corrupting things, that certain components are finally getting up to crossing the power threshhold required for them to actually be operating?  Maybe, if there is a cold solder joint, it's one through which power is attempting to travel?  Incidentally, if a SegaCD is corrupting after four hours of being on, there's probably something else you should also address going on in terms of temperature.  I can't think of a console that is incapable of operating as it should for four hours.

Have you cleaned up the coffee and coke, or at least determined that they're not the source of the fault?  Have you tested individual components for being okay via multimeter?

I realize of course that I'm by no means experienced... I say all the above only in the way of brainstorming and in "two heads are better than one" spirit.

[blackevilweredragon]

i had cleaned it up a little while ago...

my neighbor is an ex-sega employe, as i just found out, and he has a CD that must be rarer than rare,  "SEGA CD Diagnostic Disc"..  we ran it and it came up with "CD Laser Stepper Motor - FAILING"..

he said that a laser assembly CAN freeze and halt the system, which when in the CD Audio player, CAN corrupt graphics, as the area it corrupted on is STREAMED into the Genesis, as it's the live 60fps VU meters..