[rescue] prioblems with CDROM on Ultras

[r.stricklin]

On Apr 25, 2005, at 2:05 PM, Paxton Hoag wrote:

> The one in the Ultra 2 just goes out and in but won't stay in. I am 
> trying to load Soaris 8 from CD and I can't get the CD to stay in. It 
> slides out when you turn it on. When you push the button it goes in 
> for a few seconds and then pops out.

The nylon pinion that drives the eject mechanism is not up to as high 
of a duty cycle as it maybe ought, and eventually splits radially. This 
leads to the behavior you describe above. It is press-fit onto the 
drive motor spindle, and once it splits, the friction is still 
sufficient to hold enough torque to open and close the tray, but no 
longer enough to lift the transport to the tray once it's loaded (the 
whole thing is driven from the one tray motor). The logic correctly 
reads this as a tray fault and unloads the drive. You may notice that 
if you give the tray a consistent and firm enough shove, so that the 
motor isn't moving the tray, you can hear at the end the "shumpf" sound 
that is the the transport lifting from inertia, and the drive will stay 
loaded. This only works if the split pinion still fits tight enough on 
the motor spindle to hold the transport up.. I've had drives that 
wouldn't hold, so the transport would load correctly with the shove, 
but then would fall as the pinion slipped under its weight.

I have fixed this in the past with the judicious use of superglue. 
Toshiba may actually sell this pinion as a spare through their repair 
network, in which case it may be worth looking for... I can dig up the 
name of the repair center I used to deal with when I was ordering bezel 
kits to convert white-faced drives to black. They were surprisingly 
easy to deal with. One word of forewarning, if you choose the superglue 
route, the drive may return to operation, but it will make some nasty 
noises during loading and unloading.

> In trying to get them running I found the CD in the Ultra 1 is broke, 
> won't go in or out, just grinds. Is it fixable?

Almost certainly related to the above problem, but I have not run into 
this exact symptom before. It's probably worth taking the cover off and 
having a look.

ok
bear