Sony X5000 troubleshooting

Well here is what I have found today. There is a mismatch between the schematic and the servo board regarding the base of transistor Q601. This is a transistor that has to be brought well into a conducting state as it is the supply to the laser diode. Follow the signal from the collector of Q601 to pin 9 on connector CN210 at the bottom on the page. The other end is pin 4 on the laser side(LDVCC). For some reason the resistor JW600 going from the base to ground had the value 330 Ohm. The schematic says 10 Ohm. This is a small surface mounted resistor right underneath the board where the RST IC sits. I removed this resistor and replaced with an ordinary one with leads on the ends and the value 10 ohm as printed in the schematic. Well the startup problem is gone so far. Have to see as time goes by, but this could potentially also cause the skipping problem as well. We have to see ?
 
Great news dacen! Thanks a lot!. Because we have winter now, can´t you put the CDP-X5000 to a colder place, or not heat the room where it is, for one night. 10-15 degrees celsius ambient temperature is enough. I am very economical with heating my appartment, most of the time ambient temperature is about 15 degrees, which causes the X5000 to skip the first half hour.
In the summer,, it can max out to 40 degress: No skipping...
 
Last edited:
Yes Salar, this puzzeled me as well. I measured the resistance and they are just ordinary resistors. They could be "Metal Glaze" or whatever. May be somebody in here can enlighten us here. JW, I would normally translate to "Jumper Wire" but they are normally not specified with a tolerance to them.
 
Here are my findings:
I did swap JW600. (For others: Use smd resistor about 2.0 up to 2,5mm length,)
I t seems that swapping JW600 improves the player´s playback behaviour to a certain degree.
After the swap to 10ohm , the CDP-X5000 played absolutely fine, from the very beginning.
My rooms ambient temperature of about 17-18 degrees.
I did also grease the mechanics. I know the grease is made for CD-Players, bought it once from a service technician.
I also know it does not change viscosity according to temperature. (Even did hold it next to a flame, the grease does not melt further)
As being said after the swap of JW600 and new greasing, the player played fine.

But before writing "Hooray, problem solved after 17 years" , I put the player to the open window and let it rest there for 30 minutes.
(Right now, It is about 0 degrees celsius outside)

Now the player cooled down more, something around 10 degrees celsius.

After that, drop out behaviour was back, almost every 2 seconds I had a slight click. Took a hairdryer, did heat up the player´s disc compartment
for about 30 seconds (warm to the touch) and drop out was gone... and is still gone.

I mentioned earlier, I have a second disc pulley/clamper milled from aluminium, besides the original brass pulley

The aluminium pulley weights the half of the brass pulley so there is lesser mass to be moved.
Tried both, dropout behaviour did not change a bit as long as the player was cold...

Just to make sure I did not do anything wrong:
If there was an open connection at JW600, the player would not work at all?
I am asking because the SMD Resistor was a bit too big (3.2mm length) and I had problems soldering it into place.
But I checked the solder joints with a voltmeter, everything seems to be fine...
All the best,
Salar
 
Last edited:
Here are my findings:
I did swap JW600. (Use smd resistor about 2.0 up to 2,5mm length)
I t seems that swapping JW600 improves the player´s playback behaviour to a certain degree.
After the swap to 10ohm , the CDP-X5000 played absolutely fine, from the very beginning.
My rooms ambient temperature of about 17-18 degrees.
I did also grease the mechanics. I know the grease is made for CD-Players, bought it once from a service technician.
I also know it does not change viscosity according to temperature. (Even did hold it next to a flame, the grease does not melt further)

So, after after the swap of JW600 and new greasing, the player played fine.

Still, I put the player to one open window and let it stay there for 30 minutes. (It is about 0 degrees centigrade outside)

Now the player cooled down more, something around 10 degrees celsius.

After that, drop out behaviour was back, almost every 2 seconds I had a slight click. Took a hairdryer, did heat up the player´s disc compartment
for about 30 seconds (warm to the touch) and drop out was gone... and is still gone.

I mentioned earlier, I have a second disc pulley/clamper milled from aluminium, besides the original brass pulley

The aluminium pulley weights the half of the brass pulley so there is lesser mass to be moved.
Tried both, dropout behaviour did not change a bit as long as the player was cold...

All the best,
Salar

Wow!Great!So i will change those resistor also in my player...Did you also have the problem regarding keys?
 
Yes, I had also the problem with the keys, but not very often.

One advice:
Use SMD resistor of about 2.0 to 2.5mm length. Others are too big.
There is no need to disconnect the Base Unit from the servo board. You´ll need too much force to remove the flexible connectors connecting them.

Place the base unit and servo board upside down on someting soft, like cloth, pillow, but take care that the cloth does not charge electrostaic charge

Keep the ground wire of the Base unit connected to the players ground. You´ll need some extra wire to do this, because the Base Unit´s ground wire is too short.

You´ll need a vacuum pump for removing the wrong JW600 of 330 ohm.
Use a lot of solder to (over) heat it, then use the vacuum pump.

Still, the dropout behaviour is unsolved.
Do you think, your father can help?
What about the x-tal providing the player´s internal clock, can a bad one be prone to cold?
And if there is no / a bad connection at JW600, the player would not work at all, correct?
All the best,
Salar
 
Last edited:
Had the player switched off for 2 hours at around 18 degrees celsius.
Turned it on and it skips. (or better said, has little glitches/dropouts as described before)
Sounds like it hangs for fraction of a second. This happens in a regular rythm, almost every two seconds.

So soldering in the correct resistor did not change anything...:confused:

But the shape/quality CD being played has an influence too.
I did test the player with a very old CD, ("Vor der Flut" bought it around 1986) it has many, many little scratches,
But nothing serious, any other player I own plays "Vor der Flut" fine, one being a Toshiba XR-Z70 from 1984, with lesser error correction capabillities.

The other "test cd" (Steve Tibbetts "Northern Song") is brand new, (got it 4 days ago) of course without any scratches.
No audible skipping / no glitches. Again, I had the player turned off and placed in the cold before I played "Northern Song"
Also the CDP-X5000 played "Vor der Flut" still with glitches when I turned it of, there was no need to cool down the player again, but
I wanted to be on the safer side. So as said, Northern Song plays fine.

One might think, the scratches of "Vor der Flut" might trigger playback, causing radom glitches, like you would expect from a CD in a bad shape, but no.
As described, the glitches appear in a steady, almost 2 sec. rythm - which is about 16 turns of a CD.

I think the disc motor is fine, because with the brass clamper/pulley it has to turn a lot of mass. So inertia should keep the motor from
sticking - and again, as being said before, an aluminium clamper of half weight does not make a differnce.

All the best, Salar
 
Last edited:
Had the player switched off for 2 hours at around 18 degrees celsius.
Turned it on and it skips. (or better said, has little glitches/dropouts as described before)
Sounds like it hangs for fraction of a second. This happens in a regular rythm, almost every two seconds.

So soldering in the correct resistor did not change anything...:confused:

But the shape/quality CD being played has an influence too.
I did test the player with a very old CD, ("Vor der Flut" bought it around 1986) it has many, many little scratches,
But nothing serious, any other player I own plays "Vor der Flut" fine, one being a Toshiba XR-Z70 from 1984, with lesser error correction capabillities.

The other "test cd" (Steve Tibbetts "Northern Song") is brand new, (got it 4 days ago) of course without any scratches.
No audible skipping / no glitches. Again, I had the player turned off and placed in the cold before I played "Northern Song"
Also the CDP-X5000 played "Vor der Flut" still with glitches when I turned it of, there was no need to cool down the player again, but
I wanted to be on the safer side. So as said, Northern Song plays fine.

One might think, the scratches of "Vor der Flut" might trigger playback, causing radom glitches, like you would expect from a CD in a bad shape, but no.
As described, the glitches appear in a steady, almost 2 sec. rythm - which is about 16 turns of a CD.

I think the disc motor is fine, because with the brass clamper/pulley it has to turn a lot of mass. So inertia should keep the motor from
sticking - and again, as being said before, an aluminium clamper of half weight does not make a differnce.

All the best, Salar

mmmhhhhh well,now i have a terrible presentiment...i think we will completely solve skipping problems with a brand new KSS-274...
 
The evidence appears to point to a sluggish or jerky sled response when cold. The mechanical maximum lateral movement within the head is quite small...around 1mm at a guess...so the period between each jog of the sled motor might fit the rythm of your glitches.

This could be gear lash, dragging motor, or some kind of bearing lock, such that clearances become more favourable when warm. All would be peculiar to the construction of this type of carriage. The motor driver might also be suspect.

At a guess, the change of resistor allows the laser mech to tolerate misalignment better, but does not address the real problem. I still wonder if it was swapped by Sony at the last minute to rectify some other emergent fault.

Is there a way of adjusting the "balance" between sled and lateral motor? If you can alter the relationship between the two, the glitch rythm should change if this theory is true.
 
@ il capo
@ Plasticisgood

I completely disagree. A new laser never helped - I mentioned my Toshiba XR-Z70. It now runs for 28 years with the same laser.

And as il capo wrote, the X5000 needs simply to warm up without playing a disc to start tracking correctly.
So mechanical parts (Like a motor or a coil) can be still cold, but a transistor driving the coils/motor might have heated enough to work correctly.
So I guess something in the circuitry is prone to cold, not the mechanics.

15 degrees change in temperature - this is nothing for plastic or steel rods or grease.

Again, it also needs a poor RF-signal from a CD to make the problems evident.
They do not seem to occur when a CD is of good manufacturing quality.

Normally I would not care, because the player seems to play fine after half an hour BUT we can not be sure, that error interpolation simply masks tracking errors after the player has heated up!!!!
Maybe we should study schematics from other Sony players that use the fixed pickup for comparison. Players are:

SONY CDP-X3000 CXD2562Q + 2 x CXA8042AS Fixed Pick-Up KSS-213B
SONY CDP-XA30ES CXD2562Q + 2 x CXA8042AS Fixed Pick-Up KSS-213B
SONY CDP-XB930 CXD8735N - CXA8055M - CXA2568 Fixed Pick-Up KSS-213BA
SONY CDP-XA5ES CXD2562Q + 2 x CXA8042S Fixed Pick-Up KSS-273A
SONY CDP-XA7ES CXD2562Q + 2 x CXA8042AS Fixed Pick-Up KSS-273A
SONY CDP-XA50ES CXD2562Q + 2 x CXA8042AS Fixed Pick-Up KSS-273A / B
SONY CDP-XA55ES CXD8594Q + CXA8042S - CXD8762Q Fixed Pick-Up KSS-273B
SONY CDP-XA555ES CXD8762Q - CXD9521Q - CXA8042AS Fixed Pick-Up KSS-273B
SONY CDP-X5000 CXD2562Q + 2 x CXA8042AS Fixed Pick-Up KSS-274A
SONY CDP-XE700 CXD8567AM Fixed Pick-Up – KSS-213B
SONY CDP-XE800 CXD8505BQ Fixed Pick-Up – KSS-213B
SONY CDP-XE900 CXD8505 + CXA8055 Fixed Pick-Up – KSS-213B

Players like the XA5ES could be very close in circuitry design...
 
Last edited:
I bought my X-5000 second hand from Singapore. The owner told me that the player would probably need a new laser because it had started to skip from time to time lately. I have had no skipping, but the player had problems starting up when cold. There was also a problem while changing tracks. It could jump several ten´s of seconds into the new track before it started playing. This problem was largely improved by adding a sticky oil to the guide bars carrying the sled. I have yet to find the right type for the purpose, but I will.
I have to inform you that I am slaving the player to the master clock of my dac. I am using fiber optics, ST connection and glass fiber. The same arrangement for the spdif data stream back to the dac. If you have a look at the schematic and the clock solution you will see an odd arrangement. The crystal has three terminals, more like a ceramic filter known from the IF stages in radio receivers. The bill of material also states, X601 = filter crystal 16 Mhz. The dac side is running on 45 Mhz. To synchronize these frequencies they take 128FS from the dac (IC 603 pin 43) and inject it into the oscillator IC 74HCU04
That is one third of the 16,9334 Mhz . I am using only the transport part of the player and I have had no skipping. This just for info to those interested.