Sega CDX problems

I have a chinese replacement Saturn laser in mine that works great, boots retail/burned discs instantly. I also buy Gamecube lasers in bulk and those generally work just fine with retail/burned discs, sometimes I get a dud that refuses to read but that's probably 5-10% of the time. I've heard PS1 lasers need modifications to even work at all like sanding down the assembly plastic or the spindles are junk etc so I don't bother trying those. So far the CDX laser seems to work fine on most burns I've tried but as a previous poster stated; it will not play the audio on Sonic CD which is a burned copy but other games seem to work fine. Had some stuttering on FMV intros and such, not too sure as there isn't much documentation on this console from what I can find.

One last bit of information about CDX disassembly is that mine had two wires that you had to desolder to remove the main board to remove it from the CD board, I didn't see that in a pictorial I found on Reddit so if you're trying to fix one of these and don't have a soldering iron I wouldn't attempt it.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/For-JVC-6-...ckup-Lens-CD-VCD-For-Sega-Saturn/192440991771

 

For new optical pickup, you need to adjust the resister very carefully with your multimeter. To make a pick-up finally accept both GD-ROM and CD perfectly, I usually need 25+ minutes to do this step. Almost no new Chinese pick-up is directly suitable for GD-ROM without this adjustment.

But I have no experience in doing this on CDX.

 

That’s what I did

 

Don't trust burned iso for sega cd.
My LaserActive was having issues loading sonic cd quickly from a burned disc.
So I went out and bought the official mega cd release and it played flawlessly.
Just something to keep in mind.
Btw I know you can adjust the pot but mine works great atm

 

Well yes, pressed CD's tend to play easier than backups.

 

And these systems were never made to deal with burned cds.

 

The store I bought that broken CDX from had another one come in, the power jack solder joint was broken and it's working great now. Burned Sonic CD from 3 different dumps is still not playing music so I'm not sure what the specifics are with that but everything else is working great. Don't really want to pay $40 for an official copy. It doesn't work in my main model 2 SCD either so doubt that's the issue. Thanks for this thread, cool stuff and great timing!

My boot process if you can compare to yours:

1. Disc spins, LCD switches from 00 to 01 <2 seconds
2. Laser makes pew pew noises, LCD says Game Access <3 seconds
3. Disc stops spinning, disc spins again and goes to Sega boot screen <3 seconds
4. Game plays

I just did a full recap (CD, power and Genesis/main board), took about an hour and was a little sketchy as some of the capacitor leads were soldered directly to other components/ICs and underneath factory rework/wiring so I had to take pictures of before/after to figure out where things went. Not recommended unless absolutely necessary.

While going through the save data..?

 

Lol

For what it’s worth I think Sonic CD is worth $40. It’s a really good game

 

Only the best game ever made. And you know it's true if I say it, because I'm never biased at all ;D

Good to know about the Dreamcast. I bought a new laser and it didn't work out of the box, really sucky. I wouldn't mind trying this on a Dreamcast though, given that they aren't worth that much money.

I will say that adjusting pots (EF,B and such) is usually a horrible idea. Unless done properly with an oscilloscope and test gear it will just lead to the console prematurely wearing out lasers. It makes me sad to see that everyone on the Internet is blindly adjusting these pots now instead of sourcing better OEM lasers. I bet a lot of the CDXs on the used market are screwed up now.

A while back I posted a guide for this, and encouraged people to do it properly, which didn't happen. So I'm as much to blame as anybody else x_x

 

Would you re-post the guide on adjustment? I'm still seeking a proper guide on this.

 

nope, sorry, I took it down for a reason (see above post). The Mega CD 2 service manual has all the info for doing these adjustments properly.

 

Wanted to bump this since we were discussing it; my CDX replacement laser has seemed to completely fail on me after trying to play it while it sat for a week. It will not read any games, tried messing with the potentiometer as a last ditch effort, but it just hangs after the Sega screen almost every time and is stuttering heavily. Not sure what happened, but total waste of $20 and now the system is unusable.

 

Is this a fresh laser? Has it been working up until now? As there is no CDX service manual available, use the Seaga CD2 service manual for reference, it has an excellent description of laser calibration. AFAIK which pot controls which setting on the CDX is unknown but people have been able to successfully calibrate the reference clock frequency to 4.320 +/- 0.05MHz using one of them. As for EF balance and tracking gain, without the official test jig or calibration CD, we will have to improvise. I've seen a CD on eBay https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.co.uk/ulk/itm/172679023638 which might prove useful. I'm planning on using one for tuning my Sega CD2.

 

That's just a cdr. It's a waste of money.

 

The description doesn't make it sound like a CD-R. Obviously a CD-R isn't useful. Official test discs are hard to come by these days.

 

"MADE IN THE USA BY HAND
HIGH QUALITY FROM START TO FINISH.
THESE CD'S HAVE BEEN MADE IN OUR VERY OWN WORKSHOPS/Labs"

"WE THEN USE A TASCAM CD-RW900MK11 PROFESSIONAL CD Recorder"

It's very much a cdr, made by people who don't understand, for people who don't understand. At a price that makes it sound like something special.