Posted by Ed (67.31.180.234) on November 22, 2003 at 14:21:04:
In Reply to: Apex 1600 Dvd Player...Getting No Disc Error posted by Jeanette on September 21, 2003 at 21:12:28:
Hi,
I may have a solution. My AD-1600 was just out of the 90 day full warranty when it met the dreaded "no disc" error. I called customer service and they claimed this is usually a laser alignment or failed laser. They also suggested unplugging it for a few hours and trying again. The unplugging trick not surprisingly made no difference. For warranty repair on the 1-year parts replacement it is something like a flat $39 labor fee + shipping. That is not too far off what I bought it for so warranty repair was out of the question for me and figured it worth trying to fix and then trashing if the problem doesn't look easy.
So what was the problem? In my case there was a broken cable connection. Can't speak for anyone else's failure, but this happened to be it for me. The bad cable continuously flexes with laser movement and some with DVD tray movement and had poor stress relief. If you take the player apart (CAUTION - unplug the unit - potentially lethaI voltages exist and laser may pose eye risk) you should see a small flat flex cable from the laser unit to an electronics board. About midway between the 2 units it is passes through a black plastic cable holder attached to the case bottom. If yours is like mine, the cable is white with a small blue plastic back where the cable connects to the laser assembly. It is at the end of the blue plastic where my problem was - the cable bent sharply and flexed at this point. The cable can be disconnected from the laser and tested with an ohmmeter and a little patience. Mine showed at least one open circuit (I stopped testing after finding and verifying one open). Of course the ohmmeter test may be misleading as the connection could be intermittant.
So how do you fix it? Fortunately in my case this stress point was near the cable end. I cut the bad end off with scissors, scraped the white coating with a knife to expose contacts like the original cable end, glued the blue plastic from the original cable end to the back of the new end, and reinserted in the laser assembly connector. Also added some tape along the cable to try to add strain relief and took some cable slack off the bottom plastic unit to make up for the shorter cable. Then moved the head in and out manually to ensure enough play in the cable and no nasty stress points. Put it back together and so far its working like new.
Good luck. I hope this solves your problem too.
eD
: Hi,
: does anyone know what could be causing this or know of a site that could help me?
: It only worked for about a month or so...it was given to me so I couldn't take it back
: Thanks,
: Jeanette