I do not have one of these CD-ROMs but it may have technically died. They sometimes die and since they are so old statistically the chance is greater each day.

Good luck!

Maybe the firmware is corrupting day by day? I dont think the motor would die soon.. Or else something on the circuit board is maybe broken..

Yeah I guess it's just old age, unfortunately. Thanks guys

The firmware is easy to replace, and need to dismantle the whole unit so you get the PCB out of the drive..

Then you need a new firmware and chip and reprogram it.. And put it back in its socket.. Drive maybe would work again.. Every eprom are flash chip getting problems after 25 years of age.. (same as other flash / program types of chips or magnetic data carriers.
Without firmware, the drive wouldnt recognize anymore.. (same as bios chips) Better to replace them all, or if its possible to reflash them again.)

Also 5,25 and mini disk floppys wouldnt last for every.. How older how more the electronic field would disappear.

Its nothing more then replace this chip:

If you cant fix it, please sell it otherwise.. There are enough drives of these are throwed away..

Thanks, I could try that! Do you have a source for a copy of the firmware I could flash? Do you know what kind of chip it is? I haven't got anything I could use to flash chips but I was thinking of getting a flasher recently..

You need someone whos have a working drive, so he can backup his rom from that chip.. And then you can program yours.. I think its an rom chip with SOJ package. These roms are very rare on the internet, because these drives where already programmed at the factory and there wasnt never released these roms on the internet..
These cd-roms where made so that its possible to make them seviceable / to repair.. Because these cd-roms wherent cheap back in de days..

First you need to remove the chip..
Then you need to know to pin-out of the chip (which leg is for programming, and which pin is for read-out..)
You also need to have a rom programmer device.. maybe there isnt a convertor for it for use on the eprom writer.. Then you have to make one of your own.

If you have some time, knowledge then you can repair that drive. Most things goes bad bacause rom / programmed chips wont last for ever. ( roms on arcade units also need to replaced when they go bad)

One thing I'm starting to notice with the really old CD drives is that their surface mount capacitors are leaking. If you own a Macintosh SE/30 or a IIci you know very well that when they leak they fly out of tolerance and all sorts of weird things happen. I've had to recap an IBM rebranded Sony caddy drive before it would read any CD's I gave it.

I had a look at fixing this drive again, and based on CelGen's post, and the recapping PSU thread, I decided to check out the caps on this drive.

They all looked OK. I decided to replace them anyway, as you can't always visually tell. I'm not brilliant at soldering, and hadn't ordered caps before, so it took me a while (and two separate orders from farnell...) to get the job done. Wasn't too tricky in the end. I didn't bother recapping the little board that the eject switch, headphone jack and volume control are on as I figured these wont affect the operation of the drive (the tray opens fine)

So.... no luck. In the interim, I'd been trying to fix some other matsushita drives and noticed they have a switch to allow detection of whether the tray is fully extended or closed, and these are three metal pins and can possibly get oxidised and affect performance. So I checked the 563 drive and found two other switches, quite different - one for detecting that the laser assembly has been fully retracted, and one which seems to detect the tray position. The tray switch seemed find when I checked with the multimeter, but the other switch was so small, and the contact points so tiny, I had trouble keeping the probes on it while simultaneously pressing the switch.. I thiiink it might have been affected so I gave it a good spraying with contact cleaner, and rejigged the probes on the multimeter a bit more and finally got a decent reading that there was some sort of ON/OFF state being registered.

still nothing from the drive.. the laser wasn't lighting and the motor wasn't spinning. I did some googling again for the drive and discovered it's the same type as used in the Panasonic 3DO consoles. They have a common issue where a little plastic cog that moves the laser assembly can develop a crack and stop the laser assembly from moving back and forth correctly. I kinda expected my laser assembly wasn't located in the default position either as I;d been doing so much messing about with the drive.

So I decided to take the drive out of the PC and power it using a standalone power supply, because I couldn't actually hear if there was any motor activity from the drive due to the noise of the PC. I hear a very faint noise... so I unscrew the metal cap covering the motor head and see the famous 3DO gear - it has what looks like a very very thin crack in it. I can't see why it would stop the drive working though, so I put the motor back in, making sure that the cog teeth on the motor and on the laser shaft are actually 'engaged'

Power up the drive again - the disc spins! try it in the PC... yep, working fine! managed to install Quake without issue (from a CD-R too)

So it's working, for now.. I'll try hunt down a replacement cog but it's amazing to finally have the drive working, having survived all the poking and prodding I did, and the re-capping! 😀

Cool! Very nice to see that perseverance pays off sometimes. 😀

Congrats! There are several mechanical parts that wear out on these things in general, and it certainly doesn't take 20 years to happen. With a relatively common drive as that, sourcing donor drives for parts wouldn't be an impossibility, if you thought it worth the trouble.

The drive has resided in my 386 PC for the last 20 years and I've got quite an attachment to that machine, so giving up on the drive was probably never going to be an option for me 😀

My Dad was given it as a work PC to use for home but we effectively owned it. It occasionally got taken back into the office for upgrades and the CD-Rom drive and soundcard was one of the upgrades I requested. Not sure if he bought them or they took care of everything - I never saw any original packaging. The computer came back home with an SB-16 and this CD-Rom drive. I do remember a few months later Dad hands me some disc and says "oh yeah, these came with the cd drive, I forgot to give them to you!" One of them was a CD copy of Loom 😁 No idea if this was part of some creative labs bundle or not.. I've never seen it mentioned anywhere.

Anyway, It's especially great that the 3DO shares the CD drive as there would be more of an effort to preserve those machines vs a CD Rom drive that has many viable alternatives for replacement. I have seen mention of people sourcing replacement cogs for 3DO drives (they quite commonly harvest these PC drives!) so I'll try do that next.

Next job is to try fix the other real IDE matsushita drives! 😀 They're from Gateway 2000 Pcs so they're all very similar but I'd like to have them working as spares.

I'm guessing this is around 1995-ish? creative and others were cashing in on the "multimedia pc" craze and sold soundcard/CD-ROM upgrade kits.
Creative had a few, either with SB Pro or 16, Different speed CD drive, different speakers. But would have multimedia in the name somewhere!
Quick google found this pic

Our 486 came with an OEM package which included SB16 value, 2x CD-Rom, really cheap un amplified speakers. Software was full version of Return to Zork, Full version of Encarta 95 and few cut down MS software CD's that I cant remember.

My drive finally died this year. Hasn't worked properly for years but now its not even detected by the drivers. It's good you repaired yours. I had a bit of a look but mostly 2nd hand ones are mistaken as IDE drives plus their going to be pretty worn out already.

The lasers used in optical drives have a finite lifetime.
Eventually they give up the ghost.
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Yep the drive has a manufacture date of November 1994 😀

These are the speakers that I got at the time. Not sure if they came bundled or not. I thiiink this packaging box looks familiar but maybe not.

sirlemonhead wrote:

Yep the drive has a manufacture date of November 1994 😀

It's more about how hours they have been used than age. But, yeah, that one has been around a while.
.

Ah yeah, that was in answer to 'I'm guessing this is around 1995-ish?'

The cog/gear develops a hairline crack. Yes. This causes it to get stuck. I was able to repair mine - the original gear itself.

It takes longer to take the drive apart than it does to fix it. Though it was the first time I took that specific model apart. Once

It subsequently stopped working again and I haven't had a chance to fix it. I'll try glue it at some stage but I was half hoping someone from the 3DO scene would be able to knock up some replacements for that which I could buy 😀

I removed the cracked gear and drilled out the hole, making it larger in diameter by .001 or thereabouts. A 1/8 drill will do it nicely. With the stress relieved, the gear teeth almost move back into alignment. Not quite, but good enough. It really depends on how much you widen the hole. You do it by hand, both directions, from both ends of the gear. A little bit at a time and test fit.

The new "press-fit" should be looser. Loose enough that you need adhesive to keep the gear from rotating on the shaft. Firm enough that it can hold itself in place. It is also important to line the gear up exactly as it was before, just covering up the ridges/texture on the shaft.

You may need to make a set of paper washers for when you mount the motor back in place. You'll need them if the gear hole is offset in any way and the new fit wobbles in any way. Or if the teeth are ALMOST, but not quite, perfectly spaced.