CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[Jesse Skeen]

Last year from an Ebay seller in Indiana I got a prototype SGT-200 player- it's actually a SFT-100W with the stereo parts added to it. The AV jacks are on the back with label-maker labels indicating the left, right and video outs. The printed labels on the back are torn off. The rest of the player looks the same as the 100, except upon getting it apart I saw a Stereo indicator light was added onto the front, though there's nothing printed next to it.

When the player arrived I hooked it up, but when trying to load a disc the caddy would not go in- I saw that the turntable was staying in the same place no matter where I moved the function lever. The front time display indicated "18". I didn't have any time to take it apart so I just let it sit in my living room until tonight, when I finally got motivated to look at it closer. I got the top cover off, but the stereo light is attached to the back of the front panel with wires running to one of the boards, so that presents a problem as the top doesn't come off very far and I don't see how to detach anything without cutting the wires and re-soldering them later.

With a little tinkering around I was able to get the turntable to raise and lower the way it should, something under it needed a nudge to come loose. Now however when I load a disc (the caddy feels a little tight going in) and switch the lever to Play, the turntable turns but the actual disc is staying still! I loaded an empty caddy and the turntable was turning normally. The spindle in the middle is on a springy thing so I'm wondering if that's supposed to lower- again, I'm not too familiar with this model. I don't want to play with it much more without knowing what I'm doing. Anyone have some hints?
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Videodisc and stereo sound- there's no better value around!

[Jesse Skeen]

The display is still reading "18" too. I think I've seen it switch to "10" a couple times, and the Stereo light comes on and off randomly.
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Videodisc and stereo sound- there's no better value around!

[RT9342]

The way you're describing the stereo LED, that sounds about how it was mounted in my old SGT-200 that I had for about a month or two, before a flood got it. I'd just be a little suspicious as to whether it was really a prototype or if someone just added those parts themselves. CEDatum sells those stereo decoder boards, which is just about the only thing that made the SGT-200 different from the SGT-100 (which wasn't a whole lot different from the SFT-100). In fact, I had purchased one of those stereo decoder boards a few years ago with the intent of installing it in my Zenith VP2000 (which was made by RCA for Zenith and was just an SFT-100 chassis packed in a restyled SGT-200 case).
I'm not sure, though, why it would just display "18" or "10"...it should be displaying "--", which would make me think that the microprocessor (on the circuit board over the turntable) is bad. I've had a player with a bad microprocessor before - not sure how they go bad, but it can happen. But still, even if that were bad, it shouldn't affect the turntable motor on the SFT and SGT models. They have an independent switch to power the turntable directly from the incoming 120 VAC. I'd say either that switch is bad, or out of alignment, or there's a fuse blown somewhere.
It may be possible, though I'm not certain - just throwing out ideas - that a power surge of some kind may have caused some damage to the player. If you have time to do a lot of soldering wires, I think I still have parts from my old Zenith and my old Sears player (which was literally just an SFT-100 painted a different color and branded "Sears"), if you'd be interested in a replacement controller board and/or an almost complete chassis.