NeXT N3010 CD-ROM Drive Problems?

[pergamon]

Has anyone else had issues with the NeXT external CD-ROM drives spontaneously failing?

I have many of them, including a couple that I know worked a few years ago and have just been sitting in my house since then.  However, now none of them actually seem to be able to mount a disk.  They'll take in the cartridge, it'll spin for a bit, but it never mounts.  The same CD (a NeXTSTEP 3.3 Patch2 disk) mounts just fine using the same cartridge in a 3rd-party drive on the same NeXTstation so it has to be the drives and not the computer or disc.

Maybe there's some consistent age-related failure issue like with the ODs?

[bobo68]

It could be failing capacitors. see http://www.asterontech.com/Asterontech/next_cdrom_refurb.html

[barcher174]

Yup. Its definitely capacitors.

[pergamon]

Thanks for the info!  I did a little searching around and didn't find this.

It's been a while since I've soldered, but since I have 10 of these I ought to be able to get at least one of them right.

[nekonoko]

I just refurbished mine this weekend; it needed new ceramics in the drive itself plus the electrolytics in the power supply had vented sticky green goo everywhere. It was a mess.  :shock:

[pentium]

Yes. Please note that it is especially an issue with drives internal and external manufactured by Sony that they have their capacitors reworked. Sony in particular loved surface mount at this point and they ALL are at the point of failure now.

[barcher174]

Yes. Please note that it is especially an issue with drives internal and external manufactured by Sony that they have their capacitors reworked. Sony in particular loved surface mount at this point and they ALL are at the point of failure now.

And as a result the price on this vintage of drive is getting out of control. I used to be able to pick up a parts drive for $25 or so.

[pentium]

I would of expected a "non-functional" (it needs a recap) drive would be cheaper than a working or already recapped unit.

[Shuren]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1olK3LyYpJ8l-KxlL5q-__xQPT4tSN9Ha

I'm sorry, but... "Can't read device capacity" meaning that Toshiba drive is unsupported?

Thank's,
Michele

[pentium]

Toshiba's should be supported. What is your block size jumper set to on the drive?

[Shuren]

I'm a little bit frustrated... Opening the external enclosure, I had can recognize the drive and jumpers: it is the XM-3501B from Toshiba. But there is no mark of block jumpers.

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/optical-cd-drives/TOSHIBA-CD-ROM-XM-3501B.html

Here ( https://groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.periphs.scsi/U-XASRsD-Us/discussion ) I found a trace of a sort of switch for another model that change block size from "PC" to "Sun" mode, but nothing here... :/

Any ideas, hint or cocktail will be appreciated!

Michele

[barcher174]

Yes setting the block size as I recall is not done with a jumper on these drives, but rather by cutting a trace. You want the 512K block size. This link seems to confirm my thinking:

http://rainbow.ldeo.columbia.edu/documentation/sgi-faq/hardware/40.html

[TristinAEvans]

Has anyone else had issues with the NeXT external CD-ROM drives spontaneously failing?

I have many of them, including a couple that I know worked a few years ago and have just been sitting in my house since then.  However, now none of them actually seem to be able to mount a disk.  They'll take in the cartridge, it'll spin for a bit, but it never mounts.  The same CD (a NeXTSTEP 3.3 Patch2 disk) mounts just fine using the same cartridge in a 3rd-party drive on the same NeXTstation so it has to be the drives and not the computer or disc.

Maybe there's some consistent age-related failure issue like with the ODs?

Do you have any extra SCSI cables that may have come with those CD-ROM drives?