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Lab_RatFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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CD-ROM Electronics Question...

My CD ROM was having trouble reading CD's for a while, and hardly ever got better after cleaning, so after a bit of poking around in it, I found a little circuit with a tiny 'pot' situated on the lens mounting, it was connected directly to the laser diode, so I gave it a twiddle to increase the diode output and my CD works fine now. I just wondered what the pot is called in this circuit? (like LD-gain or something).

I'm asking this because it appears to be an overlooked problem with a very easy solution. My friends CD player stopped reading all CD's and they sent it away to be fixed a total of 3 times, each time it was sent back the repairman saying "It's working fine.". In the end he gave it me to strip down, but instead I had a look to see if I could find the problem. Even without using any test equipment, I located this potential devider and gave it a twiddle. I now have a fully working music system! If it's happened to me twice, how many other people has it happened to? There must be hundreds if not thousands of discarded CD-ROMS all because of a miss-set pot.
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jhance

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RoadWarrior

Well I have found those cleaning disks next to useless, I have had a couple go like this myself, but on srtipping them noticed the lens was filmed and dirty, this after repeated applications of a cleaning disk, so cleaned it with a q-tip (cotton bud in UK) and alcohol and they worked great again, so maybe you just turned it up just enough to see through the murk.

Ummm, erased any CD-Rs with it yet?   ;-)

Road Warrior
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Good point, RW! I'll have a go tonight, and if it works I might start up a disc blanking business!