woah, was this normal?

[evildragon]

I was repairing my Sony CD boombox, and noticed it's laser assembly looks familiar...

i was reminded of my Sega CD (one that is dying).. took it apart, and behold, it's the SAME EXACT thing.. (only funny thing, is that the Sony CD boombox won't play CDs anymore, it's laser is fried though)..

was this common for it to be the SAME exact assembly? I litterally attached the laser assembly from the sega CD into the boombox, and the boombox worked again for CDs... (my sega CDs motherboard's got problems---from previous thread)

[David J.]

I think the Sega CD uses a Sony CD drive...?

[evildragon]

I think the Sega CD uses a Sony CD drive...?
don't know, but the sega CD drive does have Sony chips on it..

they look VERY identical, but not completely identical...

[Fonzie]

Segacd uses sony KSS lens system... You can still buy them easily :D
In fact, a friend did that and it worked... I don't remember the exact KSS model... beware there are many models (some reads CDRW)...

[evildragon]

i wasn't talking about just the laser itself, i was talking about the whole piece, spindle, motors, circuits, heck, even the whole block, that has rubber holes on all four corners..

[Fonzie]

ha?
The KSS is the lens+translation mechanism+laser... But not the whole thing :D

Interesting...
Could you copy us the reference?
I'm sure its still possible to buy some :)

[evildragon]

it came out of a Sony CFD-440.. I just heard that there is actually a couple revisions of this stereo, some don't have the same "whole" assembly, but some (if not most), have the KSS laser...

[evildragon]

hmm, interesting.. upon receiving nik's Sega CD, the one he sold to me, I noticed something immediately different about it.. It has a totally different laser assembly, than my dying unit..

The shape is so different, the top covers are actually incompatible, because the laser is shaped different, and they are formed for them..

Interesting...

What do your lasers look like?

The one from my dying unit was all black. The one that nik sold me, has silver on the spindle...

[TheGZeus]

Hmmm.

Interesting.

What I want to know is if there are CD units that can be used in a Sega/Mega CD 1 unit.
Then maybe the one in my closet could be of some use...

[evildragon]

Probably..

After I opened up two model "two's", I noticed there is defenetly differences in the years.. the 93 model is more sophisticated, and very well built (the one I bought from nik), the ones from 94 are made with cheeper parts (the one I have that don't work).. but, their parts are NOT interchangeable..

only reason I took apart the Sega CD I bought from nik, was because every console of mine, gets a cleaning, so it keeps running great (i treat all my consoles well), and I noticed it's insides were completely different..

[David J.]

Is there a different BIOS number?

[evildragon]

yea..

the one I had that died (94), was a 9306 BIOS, the one I bought from nik (93), was a 9303... (and since there was no known good dump of the 9303 BIOS, I did a "software dump, for the emulation community) (software dump, meaning the Sega CD runs a program that just copies the BIOS to a PC, without ANY hardware hacks at all --- I call it, the "safe" dump)

EDIT: While at the BIOS screen, they both say v2.0, the BIOS dump from both machines show the 94 model (9306), is actually version 2.11...