Tag Archives: Disassembly

Disassembly

Philips CDM 12.1T Laser Sledge Replacement

This guide shows the replacement of the laser sledge in Philips CDM 12.1T CD mechanisms. It assumes that you have already cleaned the lens and done the necessary troubleshooting to rule out other errors (see this article for diagnosis with the Service Shell). If you only get dirty disc messages or experience stuttering audio/video from time to time, you can still follow the guide to clean and grease the mechanism.

For documentation, I replaced the laser sledges of two CDI450 players with unreliable or no disc recognition at all. I took different approaches to find the easiest replacement procedure, so don’t be surprised if you suddenly see pictures where things are in different places.

Philips CDM 12.1T laser sledge replacement
Philips CDM 12.1T laser sledge replacement
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Neo Geo CD Controller Pro Ball Top

When I made my MV2FS ready for home-use, I also added a ball top to my Neo Geo CD Controller Pro. This was supposed to be handled in an article in 2018, but it somehow got lost. Anyways, here it is:

The SNK Neo Geo CD Controller Pro (aka kidney bean stick) doesn’t have a regular ball top like the arcade stick. Instead, it has an indented head, probably to rest your thumb on.

SNK Neo Geo CD Controller Pro
SNK Neo Geo CD Controller Pro
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Philips 22ER9021 CD-i Gamepad Repair

Recently, I acquired yet another CD-i player for repair and it came with a Philips 22ER9021 CD-i Gamepad. The gamepad showed two common signs of usage: Broken cable insulation and an unresponsive D-Pad.

The coating is broken right behind the cable strain relief. I’ve seen much worse cases of broken insulation and even ripped out conductors, but this still needs to be fixed before it becomes worse.

Philips 22ER9021 PCB - front - with broken cable insulation
Philips 22ER9021 PCB – front – with broken cable insulation
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Philips CDI660 Service Shell

For quite some time, I was puzzled why my CDI660 was stuck in a reset loop after I inserted the test/dummy plug into Input 1. I expected it to boot into the Service Shell, like most other CD-i players. My solution so far was to use a 490 system ROM in the 660 whenever I needed the Service Shell (the compatibility and also the error were discovered during this experiment). However, this wasn’t a very practical approach because I had to open up the player and dig out the system ROM from underneath the DVC every time.

When CD-i Emulator with -testplug option showed the same behaviour, CD-i Fan figured out what is causing this error: The Service Shell module sv is missing from the 660/670 system ROM.
In this article, I will show you a simple ROM patch to enable the Service Shell for the CDI660.

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Texas Instruments TI-82 Serial Link on Windows 10

In the early to mid-90s, the Texas Instruments Ti-82 Graphics Calculator (or Graphing Calculator) was introduced and became a requirement in some high schools. I never had the official serial link cable to connect mine to a PC, but it came with a calculator-to-calculator link cable. That cable was very popular during math lessons for trading pictures, programs and games. We had several games back then, but I only remember one game, a Breakout clone programmed in TI-BASIC that was painfully slow.

I still have this calculator, but it was sitting in a drawer for more than 20 years. In this article, I will bring it back to life and connect it to a modern Windows 10 PC to install a Breakout clone or something better on it.

Texas Instruments Ti-82 Graphics Calculator
Texas Instruments Ti-82 Graphics Calculator
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Hori Joystick-7 for Famicom Repair

This Hori Joystick-7 (HJ-7) for the Nintendo Famicom has been sitting on my shelf for many years. When I finally took it out to use it for the first time, I noticed that the stick got stuck when moving it all the way to the left or right. In this article, I will open it up and fix that issue.

Hori Joystick-7 (HJ-7) for Famicom
Hori Joystick-7 (HJ-7) for Famicom
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Cuckoo CRP-N0681F Battery Replacement

The Cuckoo CRP-N0681F rice cooker doesn’t run Doom (yet; see below), but it can talk, sing and chuff like a steam locomotive. It also prepares all kinds of rice. One day, the display went blank. The next time I plugged it back in, it greeted me in Korean and wanted me to set the clock. It seemed that the internal battery had died and the user manual agreed with that:

About Lithium battery
– This product contains lithium battery for improving blackout
compensation and time. Lithium battery lasts 3 years.
– When current time is not displayed on the screen, it means the battery is exhausted. It should be replaced.

Unfortunately, that’s all what the manual had to say about this topic. A quick search on the internet didn’t reveal any clues about the battery replacement, so I opened it up to have a look inside.

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Philips CDI490 RGB SCART Modification

It has been on my table for a while to figure out a working Philips CDI490 RGB SCART modification. The topic caught my interest when it came up in the community on The world of CD-i last year. Back then, I thought it would be quite easy because the small 470 and 490 CD-i players share a certain mainboard (Mono IV) with their big brothers 660/00, 220/80 and 210/60. There are only some components missing that could be figured out by looking at the service manuals.

However, I couldn’t try it out back then because I didn’t have a working 470 or 490. I focused on repairing my 470 first and then adding a PAL/NTSC switch. Eventually, I bought the needed components and two broken 490s to experiment with.

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Pippin Atmark Controller for Macintosh

I’ve recently acquired the Bandai Pippin Atmark Controller for Macintosh (PA-82004) and took it apart today to see what’s inside. I didn’t expect a lot of surprises because this is the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) version of the Pippin Atmark AppleJack Controller (P-ADB).

The small box contains the controller, a driver/software disk and a leaflet with instructions. You will find some more information about the software below.

Bandai Pippin Atmark Controller for Macintosh (PA-82004)
Bandai Pippin Atmark Controller for Macintosh (PA-82004)
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