Trying to FIX: Faulty SONY DISCMAN D-EJ715 

I really like the discman series. Even if they are difficult to diagnose,there really isn’t enough videos on laser related products and repairs. These videos really do give a good education. Look forward to seeing the rest of these discmans repaired

Just a little advice, don't worry about scraping the wire just run the soldering iron over it, the heat will strip the enamel off the wire. If you use a scope look up "eye pattern", diagnostic procedure to check out FE and TE (focus error, tracking error). This will give you the condition of the laser. That's how we used to do it back in the day when the values could be adjusted. Great video.

Bought a Walkman D-C20 yesterday. Had similar symptoms to yours (Starts spinning for 2-3 seconds, then stops, laser searches for something -> No Disk) I was about to give up, but then i saw the resister on the laser, it was set to 2.8kOm. Moved it down to 1.5 and it WORKED ! Thank you sir for your video and help

Probably refused to play the music on the cd

Here in Norway they are going for about 50usd for a base model, and a Walkman for about 100usd. Welcome back! ❤️

❤ the "repair @all cost no matter the value". Very CoOL.... the less traveled path. Of course experience gleaned here will be applied to future & past projects. I salute you! 👍😎

Great job on the repair of the damaged traces =D You cannot always see the laser!!! It depends on the frequency of the laser. The fact the disc was spinning, shows it was actually detecting the disc (using the laser), but it was perhaps too low. Some CD units have a laser that you cannot see with the naked eye. Also note, if you have the laser set too high, the same thing can happen where it won't detect a disc. I also think you have to the two connectors the wrong way around, since that noise its making at the end sounds like it bobs up and down, and THEN hits the tracking coils, when I think it should be moving the sled! I noticed that when you swapped them around earlier on in the video (see around 30:00 - it focuses normally, then wobbles (tracking coils driven), when actually I think the sled should be moving!

Awesome video and great learning experience... Thanks for sharing!

really great video - had a similar issue with my discman and could not find any guides about it anywhere. i was also unable to fix it by messing with the potentiometer. your video helps keep me from doing a lot of unnecessary steps. thanks :)

About the enameled coated wire, you don't need to scrape the coating off, it is made to burn off when you heat it with your soldering iron,

Had a bad😥 day but u video made me feel happy 😊

Happy Christmas to you and your family Vince and i hope you have a good new year.

I think you're right about the battery leak having happened at a later stage. I dunno about lasers either, but the movement of the mechanical parts seemed a bit odd to me, like it was skipping or something, maybe not sensing it has reached the end. Might not be strictly laser diode related, I mean. I hope you find a way to fix it :o)

I feel like your gonna hit 1 mill this year

I always clean the laser with meths or IPA. I have had much success with cleaning the laser of a device. However you are most likely right with your thoughts on the laser being the reason for it being put into storage and the circuit board tracks being a secondary fault..

Very nice video, This bring so much memories back of fixing these cd players, It's most probably the laser , it should be much brighter than what you getting :-) would try reading the voltages with the laser plugged in.

Would love to know if this can be fixed! I have a walkman that does that exact same thing. Lovely video!

As to the name, this is after the Discman line, when Sony were consolidating all their portable players of all formats under the Walkman brand (CD, cassette, MD and MP3), but prior to the funky "W" logo they made. I have a D-E201 from this time that also says CD Walkman with the old lettering that I got cheap, that wouldn't recover after skipping from a knock even with ESP turned on... Turns out the spindle was loose so it would vary the spin speed and wouldn't correct itself before giving a no disc message. A touch of ciano to put the spindle back together and now it works great!!

Hi Vince, the laser in the cd players only are all infra-red with a wavelength of 780nm which is barely visible to the human eye but looking at your video indicates that the laser diode may be okay. The dvd laser diodes operate at 650nm and are bright deep red and the Blu-ray players operate at 405nm which produce a violet light.

dam! what some steady hands.

The shaking it has, it looks like the laser gears might be skipping when it tries to move further out, I wonder if its a mechanical issue with the laser worm wheel? Often a laser checks the disk type and amount of tracks right near the centre of the disk then the laser moves out to play track 1.

Vice. Let me give you some information on discs. DVDs use a red laser, Blu-ray use a blue laser and CDs use a infrared laser. Infrared is a color that cannot be seen by the naked eye. Some cameras are able to detect this light. Your camera looks like it is not able to detect that color on screen (high quality camera perhaps). To find out if a camera could detect this color, you can point your infrared device (tv remote) into the camera to see if it is able to detect that light. The light is not seen as red but more like a white/grey light. To me, the way that the laser was shaking with the grinding noise maybe the problem to why it thinks that there’s no disc. The laser is suppose to have the ability to move across the track and not shake like that to determine if a disc is detected.

Hi Vince I love your videos ,you have inspired me to buy a bang and Olufsen cdx cd player which is faulty no power at all. I'm struggling with it at the mo as it keeps blowing the solder in fuse 750ma but I'll stick with it. Ps you sound like tiff needell are you from same area.? Cheers buddy Dave...

Awesome Vince, another entertaining video to watch on my day off work 👍

Great video :) I remember having a Sony Discman. Brought back fond memories.

Hopefully I suggest this so that it makes sense. But, I think when you adjusted the pot for the laser you may have went the wrong way. On a pot you have three legs, with the "wiper" in the middle. So, while the resistance goes up between the wiper and one leg, it goes down between the wiper and the other leg. So it would depend on which leg the laser was wired to. I couldn't tell from the video if it had three legs or not, but it is worth a try. The laser did seem to get dimmer the more you turned it, or maybe it was just burning it out worse...Lol.

Amazing , your doing a schematic of a discman.

The problem isn’t the laser, it’s the track for the laser. It’s trying to move from the center of the disc to the edge. When you moved it closer to the center, you may have damaged it’s tracks. The way it reads the disc it’ll start from the center of the disc and move out wards away towards the edge as it playing music

Was watching this whilst repairing my CybaSnipa gaming keyboard pad where over the years the carbon on the keypress grids had basically created a layer over the metal and stopped the whole thing working, so with MMV approved IPA and fibreglass brush took me a while to get to see copper but my gamepad is working like new. The poor thing is worn out so I am guessing I will have to apply conductive paint onto the grids in the next repair and maybe re-carbon the rubber membrane but I have had it since the 2000s.

bro one question, you know the laser resistence for playstation 1? or do you have any tutorial about that console? 1.20 laser resistence will work or its diferent in sony playstation laser?

Hey Vince, I think you raised the potentiometer for the laser so more voltage is gone at the potentiometer and the laser doesn't get enaugh voltage. If you lower the poti then there is more voltage to the laser. It might be a fix. Sry for my bad Englisch :)

Ahh I was hoping that after 0.8k resistor turn, unit will read discs fine. Maybe try to measure laser current consumption on working unit, then you can compere it with bad one. Formula shows that "I = 3V / 1500 Ohm" = 2 mA. Maybe resistance value should be less like 0.3k to give him some juice, like 10mA :) Datasheet for this laser should contain maximum current value, but boy, is any way to know what laser model number is used in your Walkman? Perhaps not.

Vince The laser diode is most likely open. When it is working correctly the voltage drop is .7 volts.

I have the Discman from MY Childhood it is the Discman D-220 and it works 100%

Great video Vince, could you do a How you film/ your camera set up. I cant work out how you get such a good first person view. Thanks

Good luck sir 🎉

On a scope you will only see the voltage level of the laser. It basically works by shining a steady light at the CD which reflects light back to the light sensor. The amount of light reflected back varies depending on the CD. On a working CD player you could put a scope on the light sensor and see the signal. Incase you don't already know on the diagram that you showed, the laser is the one with arrows pointing away from the symbol and on the light sensor the arrows point towards the symbol.

Hope you do do a revisit I enjoy your videos and revisits good thing is you tired too get it working

I see when your soldering you have the shakes bad how about putting your elbow on the table and see if that helps i do this when i am doing fine smd soldering work helps alot also try using a K tip when doing track work like this you will have a easier time soldering it

What was the switch on the inside of the case for, G-protection? What happened to it later in the video?

"You could use your scope". I'm not saying it would have helped to fix it, but most of the time you can't test ICs using a multimeter. Input and output voltages aren't necessarily constant, they easily can be a relatively short signals which you can't see with a multimeter. And I'm not sure, but I think that more than just two pins of IC401 are related to the laser: 3-4, 50-51, 66-69, 77-80.

I’m torn, I wanted you to repair it but massively relieved we didn’t get to listen to Jedward 😂

My uncle has one and this will work perfect for him thanks 👍

Was like looking at the ending scene of terminator, the red eye going out!

nice chillout tunes in this one

Instant click once I see Vince on my Sub box 😤

hi at last you know about all the feedbacks i used to get them on my old channel all the time cassette deck reel to reel i used to do i was crazy high numbers why i stopped doing video

I guess the dropped the "Walkman" due to its introduction back then as a cassette player, so customers don't mix up stuff or even think it might somehow still plays tapes.

Hey my mate vince u wanna try fixing my macbook i dont really care if it breakes cause i am going to upgrade if it does break but if you can fix it that wud be cool

Vince, my man, please stop messing with laser potentiometers... After they are set at the factory and sealed they very rarely malfunction. They produce the lasers within a certain range in nanometers to within +/- like 5 nm. The potentiometers are then used to precisely focus the laser to an exact wavelength with no variance and glued to permanently set it. It's almost never a problem with the potentiometer. It will most often be a driver chip or a mechanical malfunction like the stepper motors or worm screw. I love the videos and your excitement to learn new things about electronics. Keep it up bud.

Don't forget you can use the corrosion vomit to identify problematic areas, it's not always the best idea to clean it all off immediately.

Hey Vince! Here's something fun for you to test some day: as batteries run down the amperage (current) will diminish, so if you connect your amp-meter to a battery you can watch it run down. The voltage should stay fairly consistent throughout the life cycle of the battery until you get close to the end. Think about batteries in a flashlight; the brightness stays about the same right up until the batteries are about to die, then it starts to dim. I've seen you use voltage to test batteries which is fine if you're testing if the battery is faulty, not so much if you're trying to figure out how "charged" it is. Try charging a battery all the way and test the current, then run it down a while and test the current again. Also, as batteries age they hold less and less current, so look at an old battery vs a new battery: charge them fully and look at the amperage on each. Have fun!!!

All CD's are read from the center out,, some CD players will use the laser to detect "Disk present" first, but then command the tracking servo to seek the inner location they usually do this by running the optical sled towards the disk spindle until it strikes a micro switch that tells the player , You have reached the inner track, it will then try and read the disks table of contents ,, you should see the worm gear drive attempt to move the optical pickup sled to seek this position, if the laser is too weak , it might not seek as it may think "no disk present why seek ,, most CD players seek inner track detect as a part of there attempt to read anyway. be mindful A CD players laser light emissions are in the infrared spectrum also be aware laser diodes are extremely static sensitive and easy to damage, some people will not unplug the ribbon cable unless they place a bridge the static protection pads with a solder bridge first,, and new ones usually ship with a solder blob in place that protects them. they wont work until this is removed ..watch videos on CD player repair to better understand how they read the disk ,, also make sure the lens is clean ..

Quite suprised that corrision had not eaten through even more of the board tracks than it had

You should turn that pot when disc is inside and it is in the process of focusing to be able to match the exact power, it is not nesessery to be a strong light. I think there is more damage to the board and some of the vias under corosion are also damaged. First spining of the disc is so laser can fall into a track, not because it focused laser on the disc. Finding a track is the fall of the light on exat spot on the photodiode matrix which then with fist spinning generates small pulses which tells the CPU to start spin the disc acording to data on the founded track.

Yayyyyyy another cd walkman video

Hmm it has a protection switch right next to the laser to protect it when moving when not using it. If you let it on and try to play it no wonder it doesn't work

I love you and your videos Vince. But please stop saying tracks and say traces instead. Keep up the great work. Lasers are always a pain in the bum!

😓 Looking forward to the re visit, my money is on the laser is shot, mind you only if all the capacitors check out OK, oh and that chip associated with incorrect voltages..

Optical drives are a world of pain, disc reading issues are difficult to pinpoint, the light emitting from the lens isn't shining from the lens it's only a reflection from the diode that has passed through a splitter and mirrored up through the lens, the motor also has to spin at correct speed and it has to vary in speed to read the info on the disc as moves from the centre out to the outer edge of the disc . The gap between the lens and disc surface is also critical ( spindle height) as is the intensity of the laser, try and find a good tutorial of how it all works together, there's a lot to go wrong when you look at it

Discman was the original name for Sony’s portable CD player. If I remember rightly they changed the name to their Walkman brand around 2000. But no difference in what they are. Discman is just an early brand.

Maybe use a bit more flux when tining tracks (a Lewis Rossman tip) Enjoyed the vid.

I had this happen on a PS1 lid switch. Had to buy a donor console. Couldn't find the part anywhere!

Hi Vince thought you were on holiday again lol Mick 👍🍻

The heat of the iron/solder is probably more than enough to burn off the coating on that wire, depending upon what it is. Just might save you a little effort

Diskman sounded cooler than walkman back in the day when CD's were new and analog tape was already second-best compared to LPs, IE disks were 2 levels better than cassettes. Sounded cooler but the early diskmans were very unreliable compared to a tape player

I got my first cd player, the sony diskman in 1992. came with aiwa headphone. sounded fantastic. for a good 6-7 years after that it was my primary cd player which I attached to amplifiers, car cassette players

Where did you get that blue mat from?

He’s back :-)

Great video Vince. Shame you could not fix it.

soak the optical drive in water with a little detergent. Then rinse with pure water and let dry well

You need to look for the "ARF" (amplified RF) TP on the board, this should be listed in the schematic which makes this easier. then you hook up your scope probe to this point, on the scope you should see a nice looking eye pattern that is clear and well defined, not too fuzzy... this is hard to explain, so i'd suggest looking at videos demonstrating this on a scope, finally you want the eye pattern to be at the correct amplitude, so set the scope up to show you the peak to peak voltage and make sure it's at an adequate level - the trimpot sets this - the correct aplitude / voltage should be detailed in the schematic, remember you need a disc in and spinning to be able to do any of the above, so your gonna have to solder wires to the relevant points and extend them out while testing. , maybe the person who sold this already significantly twiddled with the trimpot.... maybe it's supposed to be only 200ohm the only way to know for sure is the steps listed above. Once again great vid Vince :)

power fault & the laser unit should return to the centre as soon as you turn it on

The laser is trying to move past the center but keeps hitting the motor

You know that you can use an phone camera to see the IR light, phone cameras can see IR light, it sees it as a purple glow, you can even see it on a tv remote

Good troubleshooting, but there are multiple problems with this poor thing. The laser output is def way too low. Also, if the laser sled does not scan over toward the spindle upon startup, then there is a problem with the start routine, or a mechanical bind that prevents the sled from moving. A leaf switch tells the processor when the sled is at its innermost position, and the processor is not seeing that switch closure. Good luck, but it may be time to bin it.

I wanna hear more about the kitchen clock.

Didn't notice but did you actually try cleaning the laser too? ISO + cotton bud

Man I kinda want to get a disc man but they weren’t ever that portable, aside from the fact they don’t fit in your pocket

the lasers shot mate

Nice and early

Vince change the laser head to a new one, this one is no longer working.

the laser clicking like that against the spindle motor is not normal. It seems that the switch that says where is the end is faulty.

do a video on trying to fix jedwards hair cuts

Why would you not just run an insulated wire from termination to termination instead of trying to solder that fine wire in the middle of the trace? Especially when it could short out to another wire, trace or component since it isn't insulated.

Planet Jedward is one of my favourites.

Mine suddenly stopped working. Buttons don’t respond. Why?

did it work?????

A CD Walkman with good taste lol.

Nice try. Usual Vince. Break something that doesnt need fixing and make life harder lol

hi again it can be 1000 a day people leave you have 500k subs wait till 1000 subs i was getting the video on hot up cassette decks went crazy after that i did no more the video are on the cold side there are video that are hot just wait till you find some thing that doe;s very well

1:15 lol

Day 324 of hoping Vince will setup a Patreon account

will the laser shouldn't click that much when you track when it tries to read the disc it shouldn't bounce back and forth it should just move forward slightly move up and down freely it shouldn't click back and forth

Try to power up the motor that spins the disk with 3v from another power supply and see if the player reads something...

The ribbon cable is for the LCD display

trying to fix: faulty sony discman d-ej715

why have you got a jed disc lol

I had that exact walkman when I was 9 or 10. It skipped when you walked with it. Sort of ironic.

Ok. Hate to break the bad news. You fixed it but then broke it. Reply to my comment and I will tell you how if you haven't figured it out by now.