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I have acquired a recapped PC Engine Duo, but when I got it the CD spindle did not spin up sufficiently to make the disk spin and nothing could be read.  I could see the laser head moving up and down, so I thought that the motors may be bad.  I bought a new disk laser assembly : https://www.ebay.com/itm/182710804499 to replace the old one. 

When I got the new assembly today, I found two problems with it.  First, the wiring was different but the same points are present.  The second issue is much more of a problem.  Simply put, the spindle platter on which the disc sits is below the laser head assembly.  If you put a disc on the platter, half of the disc will rest on the laser assembly plastic.  I don't know how this was supposed to work with anything, but I do notice that there is a silver shaft that has room to move the platter upward on this assembly whereas on the old assembly the shaft was about as high as it could get.

I really believe that the disc shaft motor on my old assembly is not working anymore.  I applied ~3v to it and the spindle did not move where it did move on my new assembly.  The disc spindle motor and drive sled motor are powered off the came cable and BA6290A, and the drive sled works fine.  I found out how to adjust the height of the platter relative to the shaft, so I should know more once I replace the power cable from the assembly.

So I wired in the new harness, plugged in all the cables, set the spindle to what appeared to be an appropriate height, popped in a regular CD drive, put the magnetic clamp on the CD and . . . the disc refused to spin.  I swapped back the original assembly and same result, no spinning.  I think the BA6290A may be on its last legs.  While the drive sled motor works, that seems to be less of a power draw than the spindle motor.  I can also see the laser move up and down to focus and through my camera see the laser light.

I should also mention that the HuCard portion of the console works perfectly and is RGB modded with the modern doujindance mod.  When I try to run a CD I get the typical "Please Set Disc!" message.

Hey Great Hierophant[emoji845]

I made a special blast-from-the-past screenshot in honor of your visit! ; )

GHierophantReturns.png

Look familiar ? It's my/our old PC Engine RIGG (Retro ISO Gaming Guild) forum running locally, ~20 years to the day, wow! Some day soon I hope to export/upgrade it to SMF and publish it here as read-only to make more PCE/Ys history available: pcengine-fx.com/rigg/. So that's how I remembered your old Mario avatar and just patched it in. If you use another, feel free to update. : )

As for your problem, I've forwarded it both to thesteve and Downtown Chris Brown (AKA Keith Courage)! I'll let you know if I hear anything back. [emoji106] We might even get a visit from Steve, just got his account working (he was our top EE, Voultar-level).

Ok for starters the issue was unlikely motor related
Order of operations
Start sent from software
Check door switch
Check head position by bumping the limit switch
Mirror check (laser bobs)
At this point the laser head will trigger the F ok pin on the CXA1081 to the CXA1082
If the 1082 sees the pulse it moves to focus check (spools spindle and moves lens up into focus lock)
If focus lock is achieved it adjusts spindle speed to match data clock and begins read

Your system is failing between position check and focus lock

According to Console5's pinouts, the CXA1801 has F Ok on pin 28 and it is also found on pin 41 of the CXA1802.  Is there any chance that the two signals would be directly connected between the two chips?

Yes they are connected together
1081 is the source of the signal and 1082 listens for it