Trying to FIX a 1997 Sony Discman D-345 (1st Video in Discman Series) 

Loved the part where you tried playing DVD in the CD player. Priceless.

Looking forward to this series! I can tell you from the heartache of a teenager that no matter how expensive the CD player, no matter how much “shock resistance” is advertised, your cd is still gonna skip with certain movements.

I was screaming at the tv it’s a DVD 📀 😂

"Something so simple is actually becoming a bit of a pain" - every single time I try to repair something.

I might be wrong but when you turn on ESP mode, I think it needs 15 or 20 seconds to store some of the cd into memory. Then you should be able to shake it around for a few seconds.

This vid was published just when im about to go to sleep. Can’t stop seeing your repair videos man.

Vince's enthusiasm for fixing junk is the best thing on the internet!

Esp is an anti antiskip function. I once had a CD player with 45 second antiskip, and when the buffer was full, you could shake it and it would not skip. I once tried an experiment where I started the disk playing with the lid open and the door lock engaged with a tooth pick. Once the buffer was full, I removed the disk, and the music kept playing. I discovered that the CD player had a ram chip that stores the data, and when esp is on, once the buffer fills up, it just plays off the ram chip with no skipping. However, the 1997 model shown here, only has a 3 second buffer which helps prevent slips with less than 3 seconds of constant vibration.

It may be a good idea to burn a cd with royalty free music so its easier to play music through these on your next videos without worrying about copyright. I enjoy your videos. I listen a lot while im driving for hours to and from work. Keep up the originallity!

Just pick a sony D-220 up at the recycle store for free, spindle hub missing so can't play any CD at all. Google it and found your excellent video! No need to take it apart thankfully, pop the old spindle off by using a fork. Had some CD mechanisms lying around and one with required spindle. Pop the one I need off, trim the axis a bit and push it on the motor. Tada! working flawlessly! Thanks man, really appreciate this! Thumbs up!

Vince, great video.Couple thoughts regarding the skipping. I looked at an old manual for an ESP discman and it had a warning that stated turning ESP on *while music is playing* could cause it to skip. Another idea - ESP works by filling a buffer so it may work better if you turn it on, wait a few seconds for the buffer to fill, and *then* try to shake it. Keep up the great vids!

The Asian Orient, where repairing+restoring+refurbishing dead, damaged consumer electronics is more than a trade, it is a technical art.

Awesome video and LOVE your channel! keep it up. anyone agree?

These are literally the best videos, I have no idea why I like them so much.

god damn!!!! I love it, it's amazing how much this guy does not understand electronics and mechanics but still somehow he manages to fix things 10 out of 10 for he effort

If I remember correctly, the hold button should lock the other buttons so it can't be accidentally turned off, skip songs etc.

Techmoan has a video about the Data Discman

The letters ESP stands for Electronic Skip Protection, in other words a few seconds of the disc are read ahead and stored in a buffer so when the Discman is subjected to a shake, the ubit reads from the buffer and you won't notice any skipping. I remember having a Sony Discman in the 90s

Line out = Non-amplified, the jack is meant to go to power speakers, as there is no power involved; Headphone jack = Amplified, the power to the drivers is done by the unit itself.

This is the biggest audience Jedward ever reached, they should be paying you royalties

1:20 Yep, it's an early e-book reader, that used special mini CD-ROMs in caddies, but when the disc in the caddy is replaced with a mini audio CD, it can play the audio off of that. *Techmoan did a video about those.* That one appears to be a Japanese model, but the interface language is dependent on the language of the data disc used.

I think the reason those pretty much went out was there was no way to prevent skipping. I was never into those myself. I couldnt imagine having one in my jacket while riding snowmobiles back when those were popular. By that time, I was listening to a shelf stereo unit in my workshop listening to a radio station. I wasnt much into CD's. Its great to see records becoming popular again. Vynal was really never dead just hidden in someones basement in a box. CD's degrade over time badly. If a record is well taken care of it lasts forever. That being said, I remember smashing records as a kid that were left behind at a home that was abandoned. I remember saving all the good records and taking them home. Eventually sold at flea markets. It was an interesting video. I replaced the clock works in both our wall clocks today. Strangely they both stopped working at the same time. The gears were chipped on one and the other just quit. The local craft shop sells clock works cheaply. I got $3.60 off on two of them. I had to retrofit the clock arms on one and the other looks better with the new hands.

Techmoan did a review of the data discman

If it plays Jedward..... it must still be broken beyond repair :-D

Older Discmans use a magnetic clamp to hold the disc in place. The spindle is metal, with a small dip in the middle, while a rotating magnetic spindle sits underneath the player's lid, clamping the disc in place using magnetism. I prefer this method because there's no bearing to fall out, which is what happened to a later Walkman CD player I had (Sony changed Discman to Walkman for later models.) The D-15, D-25 and D-802K all use a magnetic clamp and also sound quite nice, especially the D-25!

@My Mate Vince The skipping is normal.... most of the old discmans and other brands would skip after a violent shake... The only exceptions are the ones that claim to have "ESP" or electronic shock protection. (some times known as G-Shock). Usually came in 15, 30 or 45 second ESP, which means it had enough cache memory to read ahead by that amount of time, and if the disc couldnt read, it didnt matter as it was reading from the memory anyways. when the disc read recovers, it just continue to read ahead again till it fills the buffer.

Oh man, that white, blue and green "Psyc" one brought me way back. I still remember when I got that one for Christmas when I was in middle school.

Ahhh good old antiskip - great function. But the manufacturers skimped on the ram buffer in all but the more expensive models. My minidisc recorder portable had a whopping 1 minute 20 seconds of antiskip. They also spun the discs way faster than CD players, and as such could fill that buffer in a very short time. In fact, like a classic ipod with a hard drive, the motor only usually had to spin up twice per song :) Think of a 52x cd burner going at top rpm - remember those. Sounds scary, like the disc is about to explode, but thanks to the MD's smaller cartridge based disc, the sound was way less noticeable to people around you.

A challenger for the walkman series? Color me intrigued. And that color is obviously lovely and bubbly.

I love the discman series already, had one myself with early esp. It helps but they were always sensitive to short shocks. I had a blast watching you realise it was a dvd, priceless.

the discman were some of the best anti-skip cd players on the market but depending on the year and product level (the more you pay the better they were) they still skipped so it would be good to look up each model number and see how skip resistant it was in either videos or just like reviews/forums of old tech because they don't look like they are all from the same year or product level (some look like the cheaper models while others look like the more expensive versions) so you can't just compare the skipping between the ones you have. but good video love your stuff.

Quick Tut for future reference. Hold button: Make sure it’s off when attempting to power on the device. ESP: Anti-Skip. Requires at least 10-15 seconds of not bumping around for it to work properly. It spins the disc at faster than usual speeds and buffers the music to internal memory while doing its process. Most nicer Walkman CD players will show you an animated buffer level. Resume Slider: Leave on if you want to be able to shut the unit off during a track and want it play exactly at the same location when you come back to it.

That noise is the disk scraping the inside of the player while spinning and line out is a lower volume out for connecting to a powered speaker or separate amplifier and headphone uses the in built amplifier and volume is adjustable via the volume wheel

This CD player here is one of the first gens to come out. The newer ones had a feature with " Anti Shock " on it where if you move the CD player around it won't skip. This model was bad for disk skipping a lot with time so the player works fine just the way it is.

Subbed! Please continue with this series!

I used to have a CD Walkman, and i remember making mix CDs. Now we can store much more songs on a smart device, especially with internet.

Hello Vince, the Language in the "CD-Kindle"/E-Book Reader(?) IS Japanese! If you want to translate the Text in a quick manner i recommend the Google Translate App. The App Version of Google Translate has a Kamera Mode that works pretty good(at least with Englisch, Polish and Dutch to German). Good Luck with the other devices and keep up the Great Videos ! Daniel from Germany

Love your vids man im obsessed with watching them haha i think it's ever so interesting to watch your good at what you do man keep up the good work!

My discman has a anti vibration button which stopped the jumping whist running, but earlier ones didn’t have that function.

Hey, its Raihan from Asia, Bangladesh.... Really like all of your videos... 👍

Thank you for this video. Now I have fixed my Sony D-330 from college and is right now playing Blur 13.... Sooooooo goooood. (And my 4 yrs old son is in queue to play his CD stories tomorrow morning:)

You should really make a disk with royalty free music for the other deskman repairs. Part of the fun is hearing it work and getting excited at the same time you do. Does that make sense? Because of the RU-vid bots, they’ll automatically demonetize your video even with 3 sec of a song. They scan most all videos that get uploaded for copyrighted material. I’m sure you know that already though.

I used to have a D345 disc man back in the day! It had a LCD stick in-line remote control that you plugged the headphones into. If I remember right, if you turned ESP on, the disc man would spin the cd at a faster speed than usual so that it could fill up the buffer hence the noise from the pickup skipping aback and forth as it relied on the contents of the buffer to allow the head to find its place on the disc. The grey button next to the screen used to select the ESP mode and depending on the mode, LCD bars would display as the buffer filled up and ad the player suffered shocks, the bars would go down as the buffer would empty. It was very cleaver for the time and as such warranted a high price tag! I think I paid £150 at the time which was a lot back then! Would love to still have that player today! I used it everyday back and forth to work! I even used it to transfer compact discs to a portable mini disc! Happy happy memories of the 90s! Better times long gone but not forgotten!

Cool video. As I recall, “resume” allows the disc to repeat back to the beginning once the last track has completed.

I had a Goodmans CD player in my day, obviously not the quality of a Sony, but I distinctly remember, even though it had an anti shock feature, it skipped like your Discman. I recall you could buy car kits to mount to your dashboard and connect to the cassette player, but they were quite hopeless on a bumpy road.

Not all discmans had anti skip technology so thats normal vince, good job!

Good CD players have built in focusing and dampening so when you move or bump the player it doesn't lose focus on the disc. Your issue is when you bump the player hard enough the laser loses it focus and it skips or has to pause to regain focus. Some have better clamping of the disc so it dosnt wobble the player you are testing seems to be cheap and dosnt have any of those features. Most machines laser can be adjusted to be stronger the reason the disc didn't play when you swapped out the spindles is because it was to high up from the laser but you can fix that by adjusting the focus making the laser more powerful it will burn out the laser faster but that can also make it work as well.

Awesome stuff Vince! 👍

All those players to fix? This is gonna be a good one

I love all the fixes and videos

'Line out' is a fixed level output unaffected by the headphone volume output and has better sound for when using with an amplified speaker system.

About the CD-ROM lenses, not maybe, that's exactly what CD-ROM's do (and DVD and BR), they adjust the lens height to calibrate the laser, if you look closely to a spining CD-ROM you will see how much they wobble and how the lens follows that wobbling, without the capability of compensating these height differences that type of technology would have not been possible :) Also, they are even able to compensate the X axis, in the case the CD isn't completely centered. What they don't handle at all are speed changes, when the discman did not read your cd I can hear some scratching noises, so my bet is it was touching the lid making it to spin at an uneven speed. About the shacking, yes, they're sensitive, the later models had a 5 to 10 seconds buffer, but the early models only had one or two seconds (I still have one of these, a Sony, working like the first day) so when you shake it or turn it fast they stop reading because the speed changes and the lens can drift a bit and the buffer usually drains out faster than the read recovers.

Yep, absolutely right, vince. It is like that from new, that is why sony could not call it a walkman. I had one from new, you done well. I learned a lesson or two as well. Re

Another device saved from the scrap yard ?! Well for a little longer anyways... dropped yo a like Vince..

Vince you could do with investing in a 3D printer broken parts like this could be replaced instead of gluing, buffering/skipping on old disc players was a design issue later fixed with the Anti Buffering I've still got my old walkman with the Anti Buffering mech maybe your discs are older earlier models before they got updated, mine still works fine even when you shake it.

A headphone output will have a built in amplifier to be able drive headphones and include a volume control for the user. Line out bypasses the built in amplifier so that the sound can be driven completely by the amplifier in the speakers/sound system you're plugging it into.

My Walkman, PS1, PS1 controller rumble motor and my sister's Sony radio/CDplayer all had the same or very similar motor. The spindle were slight different, but all fit the same. I know this because I took 'em all apart when my PS1 CD spindle broke and I was desperate to replace it. I was in highschool and couldn't afford to get my PS1 fixed.

Great fix Vince! I would have thought that bouncing noise was normal for a CD player! One would think Super ESP would make make it skip LESS, not more! HA! Thanks for the great videos!

love these vids can't wait till see more of the Walkman though

The ESP (Electronic Shock Protection) was known to crap out on the Discmans.There is a chip that records the music ahead of the track so you don't hear the skip,some units recorded up to 45 seconds I believe.

I think that spindle part with the ball bearings shouldn't come off as a separate piece, rather it should stay fitted with the circle base so it won't come off with the cd. The spindle should stay on the base when you take off the cd and it shouldn't be wobbly if the spindle was previously taken off

can see your love for jedward "i dont care if the cd breaks" lol

I have a really cool old CD Walkman with G-shock anti skip tech, that thing was like $90 or something like that. Its the CD Walkman D-EJ100 White with orange, it also has the headphone hand control so you can control it while its in your backpack or pocket. ROFL It used to seem so high tech 😂😂 Now it just sits there but it looks so cool still!

Hi Vince, if you want to know more about the Data Discman you could watch the video about them from Techmoan.

I had that same blue one like 2003. It was my first decent CD player. I'd guess it was about $60USD when new. Also, If I remember right, the skip protection really didn't work that well.

Nice little video Vince, I know some of the older Discman's had issues with the tracks skipping and they added some sort of mechanism in newer ones to combat that, maybe this is one of the older ones? Also as others have suggest. Burn a CD with Royalty Free music. Few around such as Approaching Nirvana, No copyright sounds and many many more

The spindle is the same as the ones used on original Playstations.When I used to replace the spindles I used a sparkplug gap gauge between the spindle and motor to get the correct height of the spindle.

Hey vince, just wanted to say good video. Also the walkman didn't have much of a memory chip to store the audio. I know the one I had back in the day would hold up to 30 seconds of music with skip resistance. It's just how old cd player walkmans were, and depending on the buffer system (where it would catch up to where you're at) it would almost be seamless. The Walkman I had came at the end of the CD age and beginning of the mp3 player age.

I have the Sony Discman D-220 i have been buy it back in 1993 and it works still today very well. I just had have to increase the voltage of the laser a bit, after all these Years.

I guess with earlier discman models people who still had a Walkman could argue that it wouldn't skip or jitter

Skipping like that when moving the player is pretty normal for a Discman. The later ones had bigger buffers to help mitigate this. That is the "ESP" function. My guess is the ESP on that device is only good for a few seconds, which is more or less useless when carrying it, jogging with it is not even an option. Later models had close to a minute of ESP, which helped a lot, though still not great, there were even some that would spin up the disc, cache an entire track into memory and turn off the spinning. But then the MP3 market sort of exploded and portable CD players were left in the dust. Great repair though :D

I remember running with mine as a kid, more like limping around the track in the woods, think I had like 45 sec anti shake aswell... god bless mini disc. And then mp3.

Brilliant to us a Ps1 for a part source ! Universal parts were less common in the past. I never knew they were replaceable.

I love it! Make more of this type of videos on YT!

Nice fix. Not sure how I feel about robbing a ps1 to save a walkman but you've ordered new parts so I guess both will be good as new soon. You may want to download some royalty free music from either the RU-vid library or one of many producers and burn a disc. Just please no more jedward.

Also the esp can store music in memory so there is no skipping. But because your one the spindle is rubbing it can't speed up slightly to store the music. There are two modes one short and one slightly longer.

if you want the discman to be shock resistant you should turn on antishock protection ESP (Electronic Skip Protection) and wait 10 sec until discman spins up the disk twise the normal speed and copy some of the disk to its memory to be shock resistant, it will withstand 10 or 15 sec constant shocking untill it feels memory again when no shock occured. That is how the ESP works on all discmans. Depending on the model you will have more or less memory seconds.The spinner should rotate freely without touching the chassy, that is why there are so much scratchy noises from player and skip too much.

Was waiting to see how long it would take you to realise it was a DVD hahaha. I think the resume thing works where if you turn the Walkman off during a song when you turn it back on it'll remember where you left off. I have an mp3 player that does this, could be the same? Just a guess.

It is perfectly normal for the laser to skip on shock, that's why it has the ESP. But every shock protection has limitations. The early ones, I believe were 3-5 seconds, then they made them last 10 seconds and I believe the more advanced systems were up to 20 seconds. Just check what kind of shock protection you have and how many seconds does it last under vibration and you'll know if it's working properly.

I had the really nice thin black one I want this Sony Walkman Discman D-EJ0 its awesome

Vince, don’t you remember the days of driving around with these CD players on the front seat and them cutting out anytime you hit a bump? It’s a spinning disk-it’s not meant to be jostled around.

Hi Vince, some information - That data disc man is a pretty rare thing, I think Techmoan's channel has done a video on a similar item, (channel link below) ru-vid.com Those CD disc man's were nice gadgets back in the day, it would have been useful to have the original power adapters/ chargers, as Sony went through a phase in the early to mid 1990's, when many of their portable devices used bespoke rechargeable batteries & chargers in various odd shapes & sizes. I recently bought from a charity shop, a 1997 vintage Sony Minidisc Hifi system with CD & cassette, every thing works, except that the CD player skips regularly, so I'll have to have a look Inside, it may just be a dusty laser lens, or could be something more complex.

for the silver one that requires the special batteries you also need the remote with a cable to even use it, from the connector i guess it's the same plug as the PSP 1000 used to have for it's remote / headset

you need to turn the esp mode on to prevent the skipping

I believe the one with the special batteries are called Gumstick Batteries

I remember those they love to suck batteries dry in a couple of hours, but they were great.

CD players have an adjustable potentiometer to compensate for the power output of the laser. Assuming there is one for this player you could adjust it with a small flat blade screwdriver. That might correct the problem, just a thought. Those flat batteries aka "gumstick" batteries are available on Amazon at fairly cheap prices. I have an old iRiver CD/MP3 Player that uses them.

the ESP mode was only for the expensive models.. it was essentially a buffer... I bought a cheaper discman without ESP in 1990 for £200 and the music used to skip with the slightest knock... Really regretted not buying the ESP one.... resume let you resume from the same point when you turn your discman off then back on again.

Screaming at RU-vid that you pushed the black spindle part too far down the metal motor spindle. The underneath of the plastic flange is scraping the plastic motor chassic. Raise the spindle CD holder by maybe 1mm or half a mm so the scraping goes away. Also, using glue will never work because the balls press into the band when a CD is inserted

Some CD players back in the day came with a jogproof built in, I went through a couple that used to jump all the time whilst doing my paper round

I have switched the spindles and had them work usually the only thing different is the things that hold the CD, also you should use windows media player to burn a CD with music that can be used without getting copyright stuff I always check the RU-vid audio library before I start editing a video

The sound this pick up makes suggests, that it can barely read the disc. It could be, that the laser diode is weak or it needs adjustment for which a scope is needed. Nevertheless a very interesting repair video.

Resume is some kind of memory holder. When you press stop the cd player will hold the last position. When you press play again it will restart from the last memory

Did you get a chance to work on the Sony cd player with dead screen?

@My Mate VINCE. I know I'm rather late to the party here and you may have worked this out already, (I haven't finished watching the video yet), but that first cd player has a piece missing from the inside of the door. It should have a stabiliser spindle that lightly presses on the top of the cd, to stop it from flopping around. Yours is missing on that unit and that's at least in part why the cd is flopping around and may even be what caused the spindle to break in the first place, due to extra torsional stress being placed on it.

Vince, needless to remind you that your heating station has a power supply, and you can connect it to the adaptor jack pads on the board of those discmen

Iv had a few and they all skipped but i did have yellow disk man that had jog proof on it i could bounce it on my bed and it never skipped well done Iv learned you can buy centre piece for ps one great video what’s next Sony handy cam that would be interesting

discmans are generally quite steady whn you shake them so long as you have the ESP turned ON

Hi Vince Love your videos. what kind of little laptop is the one you use to show your eBay purchases. Cheers

You can replace the spindle hub. If you identify the model name and number. Don't glue it, that'll make it worse. There are replaceable spindle hubs out there. I had a discman walkman before. There compatible for Playstations, DVD Players and Boom Boxes.