I'm trying to repair a dead Meridian 500 transport for a friend (VAM1205 version). It came to me with two faults:
1) Badly struggling to eject and close.
2) Failure to read discs.
I've now got the drawer action working well but it still doesn't read discs even after I replaced the optical block with a brand new one.
With a disc loaded, if you press PLAY you get the message 'LOADING' on the display but sod all happens, no disc rotation at all. This was the same with the old optical block too.
I haven't been able to find a copy of the service manual so I'm flying blind with this one. If anyone is familiar with this machine and knows of some common failure modes I'm all ears! You might save me a lot of trouble.
1) Badly struggling to eject and close.
2) Failure to read discs.
I've now got the drawer action working well but it still doesn't read discs even after I replaced the optical block with a brand new one.
With a disc loaded, if you press PLAY you get the message 'LOADING' on the display but sod all happens, no disc rotation at all. This was the same with the old optical block too.
I haven't been able to find a copy of the service manual so I'm flying blind with this one. If anyone is familiar with this machine and knows of some common failure modes I'm all ears! You might save me a lot of trouble.
The output voltages of the various regulators look OK and there are no signs of any damaged components.
Have You removed the laser protection solder blob on the head block.
Check if there is one.
Disk usually rotates upon acquired Focus signal.
Does the lens even move or the laser turns on trying to focus ?
Check if there is one.
Disk usually rotates upon acquired Focus signal.
Does the lens even move or the laser turns on trying to focus ?
Yes, that was it! A very dirty tray closed position switch. I didn't occur to me that this was faulty as the tray motor didn't overrun at all.
Now fixed.
