CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[flipynif]

Just got a new Stylus for my SFT100 player. Excited I put it in and threw on Return of the Pink Panther (which didn't come in my DVD box set). The familiar RCA Selectavision startup came up and played for a minute then started all over again.

Doing some basic troubleshooting I manually put the arm ahead a bit and played the movie again. There I saw the movie playing fine, however it skipped back to where it started again after a minute or so.

Opening the machine The gears looked fine on the back right and the little belt was still attached. Moving the gears by hand the arm did move foreward, and the metal bar the arm is on was rather dirty and sticky, so I cleaned it with some rubbing alcohol.

Tested again same problem.

The visual fast forward works, but skips just the same, the rapid fast forward does not seem to work at all (the one that fast forward with the video off).

Any suggestions? (sorry for the long winded story)

[cedmagic]

It sounds like the Servo Drive belt has taken a set and needs to be replaced. Even though the belt may look fine, if the player sat unused for years the belt will have stiffened where it contacts the servo motor shaft, which will no longer be able to rotate the belt. Under these conditions the pickup arm is also incapable of motion, so you only get the minute or so of playback afforded by the spring mounting of the stylus tip, which suddenly springs back to center when it reaches the limit of this motion.

Other less likely causes of your problem could be failure of the servo motor itself or its associated circuitry. Or the pickup arm mechanism could have excessive friction or misalignment to the extent that the servo motor cannot generate enough torque to overcome it.

A new servo motor drive belt can be purchased on this page:

http://www.cedmagic.com/home/purchase.html

--Tom Howe