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Showing posts from November, 2016

DVL-909 Repair Notes

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The unit was purchased on Ebay for about $10.  The seller basically said he pulled it out of storage and it just didn't work.  Images in the listing showed both the LD and DVD trays ejected. When it arrived, as per usual, the packing job was not adequate to protect the unit from damage. The machine powered up but the tray would not eject. Disassembled the unit and found the tray was jammed by the yellow switch lever that switches the eject mode from LD to DVD.  It had evidently received a shock hard enough to push it up into the workings of the tray itself.  Carefully prying it loose allowed the tray to be manually ejected by finger-turning the pulley just under the left side of the tray at the front of the unit. The next issue I noticed was that the pickup had received a shock hard enough to move the left side up above its track so that the entire LD pickup was sitting at about a 30 degree angle.  Miraculously the motor holder was not damaged at all.  I removed the LD tray, then  

For the Love of Laserdisc

Why Laserdisc? Plenty of obsolete formats garner a following because of nostalgia (I can't fathom why else anyone would actually like 8-track cassettes), and a few of them remain popular long after the sun sets on their era because they remain superior in one way or another to the thing that replaced them. Laserdiscs kind of fit in both categories.  I didn't grow up with laserdiscs.  Heck, I only ever remember seeing a laserdisc player once when I was growing up.  But I sure knew what it was when I saw it. Dipping My Toe In the late 90's when DVD was on its meteoric rise as the replacement for both Laserdisc and the vastly more popular VHS, I dabbled a little with laserdiscs.  Being a 12 inch disc format just like vinyl records, the disc jackets featured a whole square foot of artwork.  They were just cool to look at.  So, like a lot of people, I bought a handful of laserdiscs before I even had a player to play them with. Some time in the late 90's, My wife and I stoppe