Replacing blown fuses in Philips CD-i players with Mono III and Mono IV mainboards – sounds too simple to write an article about. That’s why I’m going to dig a bit deeper into the topic. An important fuse sits on the mainboard and protects the -5 V rail. I tripped (over) it by accident and was confronted with these weird symptoms that are hard to diagnose:

• No video output (well, there is something, but see below)
• Service Shell video output with a rolling/flickering image
• The disc tray opens on its own (tray loader motor is constantly spinning)
• The spindle motor is constantly spinning
• “cd” flashing on the VFD