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On a whim, I purchased a complete type 5103 10-disc CD changer in unknown condition. At $160-delivered, I was certain I’d overpaid to take the “gamble”, but given my recent efforts to document the Datalink protocol, my curiosity got the better of me, as I wanted to see what efforts B&O went through to integrate this obscure, 3rd party rebranding of a Sony 10-disc CD changer designed to be placed in your car. (Short answer – a limited amount of effort, from what I can tell).
The unit arrived in VG condition, but frozen. I quickly discovered that work would need to be done in getting it operational – the tray elevator was non-responsive, resulting in nothing being loaded, much less mounted for playing. So I broke out my screwdriver and started to remove the outer shell in an effort to see how the thing worked.
It’s actually a quite clever exterior design, with the internal chassis mounted on shock bushings, designed to dampen the player while underway down a bumpy road. It’s designed to be mounted in one of two positions – either flat horizontal, with the cartridge coming out the side, or vertical, with the cartridge facing directly upwards (this would become a significant point later).
A few minutes of online research made me conclude that the Sony unit is most likely a Sony CDX-A20, a second-generation unit (the first-of-its-kind being an A10). On this note, it would appear that there is nothing different about the Sony part from a stock unit, with the exception of it being branded a “Bang & Olufsen” unit on the front. Given the identical mechanical nature to a stock A20, I’d venture to say that you could probably assemble your own CMM-10 on the cheap by purchasing a 5103 controller for $30, and finding a used CDX-A20 to plug into it. It’s also possible that an A10 would also work, as it uses the same 13-pin I/O plug.
After some gentle prodding of the main elevator gear, I managed to free the elevator from the grease-turned-glue that had bound it in place, and the unit began responding to ‘Tape Play’ commands. By ‘responding’, I mean it would pull out a CD and position it correctly, then fail to detect that the step had completed properly, and promptly return the CD to it’s holder. It would next raise the elevator to the next CD in sequence, and do exactly the same thing again, until it had gone through all ten slots, without playing a single CD. At least there was some progress.
After verifying the function of the light detection sensors, I began looking for some kind of mis-calibrated spring-loaded switch, or some other sensor that I had not yet seen. A bit more fiddling led me to the discovery that when I positioned the player in the upright position (remember from earlier that it can be mounted in 2 main positions), the sensors correctly detected the CD and promptly lowered it into position over the laser and began to play it – the unit was now working!
… ‘Ish’. Clearly I’m going to have to examine the capacitors and adjust the laser strength/focus, as some of the CDs were prone to skipping and/or getting stuck on sections of the CD. I’ll have to do some research on the laser adjustments for these Sony lasers, and find out of they are prone to the same issues that plagued the old Philips servo boards. My initial examination of the capacitors revealed a few familiar Sanyo units, which I tend to replace in the Beolink 7000 units.Great to see some documentation about these… they were often pictured hiding in the cube of a F1000 for obvoius reasons. 🙂
Location: Silicon Valley
My B&O Icons:
So, what can this unit do? For starters, it does work with a subset of basic Datalink controls. ‘Play’ plays, ‘Stop’ pauses, ‘< Step’ and ‘Step >’ work as they would with a standard Beogram CD player. ‘<<‘ and ‘>>’ have been commandeered to advance and return from one CD to the next, instead of used as ‘FF’ and ‘REW’ through a song (which may be commands that the A20 doesn’t support anyways). Although I have not tried it, ‘>>’ + number will skip to the CD in that position in the carousel. When one CD finishes, the next one is automatically loaded and played in sequence. On the plus side, the system is quite responsive, on par with or slightly more quick than the standard CD5500-7000. Unfortunately, on my unit, no current status information is transferred via Datalink, such as ‘Track number’, or even ‘transport status’, either via the Beolink 7000-specific protocols, a MCP 5500/6500, or a Penta status update. So in that sense, it’s a bit of a one-way system that responds to commands, but offers no listener feedback.
So herein lies my disappointment. the Sony CDX-A20 is designed to be used with a head panel on a vehicle dashboard, and has a dedicated pin for transmitting CD data to a display. But I get zero status on any B&O controller or Powerlink speaker- a wasted opportunity for a reasonable integration solution, which would have taken only a minimal effort to program.So there are a few places yet to explore for some definitive answers as to where any fault in the status reporting may lie. 1) Check the Sony data-out line for a signal denoting the sending of data. If present, then either 2) the B&O firmware is not responding as expected, or 3) hasn’t been programmed to pass on the Sony display status data via Datalink. My unit has firmware version 1.0 – I have seen a picture of a 5103 controller with firmware version 1.1, but without more knowledge, I cant speak to what changes are included in the later revisions of the controller.
Given the CMM-10’s limited integration, I can’t imagine that these sold all that well. For starters, the use of Datalink ’80 as a control protocol means that the CD changer has to reside reasonably close to the Beomaster, with it’s own exclusive 7-pin connection tied directly to the Beomaster in order to function, instead of in a cabinet somewhere, perhaps in another room – IMHO a clear limitation that lies in the chosen implementation. To me, any perceived market need by B&O was an opportunity to put a DL’86-enabled unit (or series of units – up to 7 total!) on the Aux MCL, and have it addressed via the Source “Unit” designation that the DL’86 protocol was designed for.Perhaps they were simply intended as a stop-gap solution for those customers who asked for multi-CD changers for background music, or commercial customers who simply wanted an un-managed 10-hour playlist. If anyone has more information on these strange-and-likely-rare-for-a-reason units to help me better understand the what/why/when/where of their genesis, feel free to add to the discussion.
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