Hi,
I have a Tascam 564 Digital Portastudio with what appears to be a TEAC Mini Disc. I'm getting a “READ ERROR” issue, which I appeared to have caused when fixing another issue on the device.
First of all, I worked for 40 years on complex medical devices, so I’m fairly technically competent. Having said that… well, you know.
Summary: The TEAC (?)(seen on PCB) mini disc device WAS reading, playing a song on the disc, but it would not eject. I pulled the disc player out and found the capstan drive belt, part of mechanism to retract and eject the disc, had disintegrated. I cleaned up the gooey mess on the pulleys and put a new belt on. The eject now works great! But… somehow in the process (of course) I messed up the reading function.
a) It’s possible it could be a poor ribbon cable connection for two cables that feed the mini disc unit, which I have disconnected and reconnected a few times. (I'm familiar with these kind.) They don’t appear to be made to be removed and reinstalled multiple times. But, all in all, they look pretty good and are secure.
b) The Tascam unit is open so I can see inside the mini disc frame enough to tell that it seems the disc is not rotating once inserted while it’s trying to read and verify the disc. The magnetic disc spin head is free to turn.
c) Also, when I first put the disc in, the upper ‘head’ does not appear to be dropping onto the disc (which is not spinning). Then again, I don’t know if the upper head is supposed drop during this process when the unit is just checking the disc. I can move the gearing manually (see PHOTO 3) to allow the head to drop.
d) As far as that upper head goes, I’m stumped on something. As you can see in PHOTO 1, there is a fork shaped ‘arm’ above the head. I think it’s supposed to be attached to the head (?), to lift it up and down(?), but I don’t see a logical way to connect it! I think I bumped this head assembly when I was first working on this unit. I don’t think I bumped it badly enough to dislodge it from the lift arm like that (if that’s what that arm is and if they are supposed to be connected). But, I guess I could have.
Also in PHOTO 1, you can see the head is resting on the disc carriage when it’s in the eject position. I’m sure this isn’t right.
As you can see in PHOTO 2, on the top of the head arm, there is a formed metal feature (A) with two loops (B and C). It appears that they should loop over the lift arm, but that would take some bending gymnastics that I’m quite sure I didn’t go through to dislodge it earlier. I can easily get B to hook onto one leg of that arm, but it makes the head crooked.
Anyway… at the risk of rambling and continuing to guess and make things more confusing, I will stop here and see if anyone has any input so far.
Thanks in advance!
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I have a Tascam 564 Digital Portastudio with what appears to be a TEAC Mini Disc. I'm getting a “READ ERROR” issue, which I appeared to have caused when fixing another issue on the device.
First of all, I worked for 40 years on complex medical devices, so I’m fairly technically competent. Having said that… well, you know.
Summary: The TEAC (?)(seen on PCB) mini disc device WAS reading, playing a song on the disc, but it would not eject. I pulled the disc player out and found the capstan drive belt, part of mechanism to retract and eject the disc, had disintegrated. I cleaned up the gooey mess on the pulleys and put a new belt on. The eject now works great! But… somehow in the process (of course) I messed up the reading function.
a) It’s possible it could be a poor ribbon cable connection for two cables that feed the mini disc unit, which I have disconnected and reconnected a few times. (I'm familiar with these kind.) They don’t appear to be made to be removed and reinstalled multiple times. But, all in all, they look pretty good and are secure.
b) The Tascam unit is open so I can see inside the mini disc frame enough to tell that it seems the disc is not rotating once inserted while it’s trying to read and verify the disc. The magnetic disc spin head is free to turn.
c) Also, when I first put the disc in, the upper ‘head’ does not appear to be dropping onto the disc (which is not spinning). Then again, I don’t know if the upper head is supposed drop during this process when the unit is just checking the disc. I can move the gearing manually (see PHOTO 3) to allow the head to drop.
d) As far as that upper head goes, I’m stumped on something. As you can see in PHOTO 1, there is a fork shaped ‘arm’ above the head. I think it’s supposed to be attached to the head (?), to lift it up and down(?), but I don’t see a logical way to connect it! I think I bumped this head assembly when I was first working on this unit. I don’t think I bumped it badly enough to dislodge it from the lift arm like that (if that’s what that arm is and if they are supposed to be connected). But, I guess I could have.
Also in PHOTO 1, you can see the head is resting on the disc carriage when it’s in the eject position. I’m sure this isn’t right.
As you can see in PHOTO 2, on the top of the head arm, there is a formed metal feature (A) with two loops (B and C). It appears that they should loop over the lift arm, but that would take some bending gymnastics that I’m quite sure I didn’t go through to dislodge it earlier. I can easily get B to hook onto one leg of that arm, but it makes the head crooked.
Anyway… at the risk of rambling and continuing to guess and make things more confusing, I will stop here and see if anyone has any input so far.
Thanks in advance!
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