Just thought I would post back and say that the parts from Dillen arrived today and the CD player is all fixed.

I replaced the capacitor and rectifier on the main board first, and that fixed the CD drawer not opening issue - that now works perfectly.

I rebuilt the main board and tested each of the old caps as I removed them. Some were a bit out, but none seem drastically faulty. When I put it back together the unit still wouldn't read discs and seemed exactly the same. Grabbing at straws I cleaned the laser lens - it didn't look dirty but some dirt certainly came off. After this the CD player worked perfectly!

I should have checked this first of course - but as the main board needed recapping I just assumed the read fault was because the servo board needed it too. Mind you - everything should now be back in tolerance.

I'm dead chuffed to have repaired my first item -  thank you all for your help :)

AAAH - it was all working fine, and whilst I was testing it playing CDs earlier it suddenly cut out and has lost all power. Not even the standby light illuminates!

I've tested the power supply and everything is ok - although I seem to have lost the 5v supply that feeds most of the ICs. I only have 0.3v at pin3 of IC1 instead of the 5v it should have. The 13v supplies seem ok.

I haven't found any dodgy caps - and the Zener diode reads 12MOhms when the negative lead is on the cathode, and open circuit when the leads are swapped.

Has anyone got any suggestions as to what I could check for this? I'm beginning to think this item has spent too many years suffering in the heat and cold of a loft and may now be very unreliable.

Cheers

--Duplicate post--

The 5V are supplied by 2x 7805 Regulators... pretty easy to check.

Thank you - I've taken a look at this - and unsoldered pin 3 of IC1. When I test that there only seems to be 0.3v. Presumably there should be 5v? There is 13v going in, but almost nothing coming back out.

Should I replace this regulator? Would it have failed because of some other fault on the board?

7805 Regulators can fail because of overload. Use a regulated power supply with 5V 1A and insert the 5V by the power supply. Then you see wether there is a short or something else.

Then replace the 7805.

Or just replace it and test the heat consumption. You will see pretty soon wether there is overload.

Thanks for that - I have replaced IC1 with a new 7805 and now power has been restored! Great! The temperature of the regulator seems good too - it is certainly lower than the other two regulators bolted onto the same heat sink.

All the logic seems to work - tray loading, disc scan, track skip etc. If you leave it to play it will cycle through the various tracks. I thought I had cracked it - but when I connect it to the Beomaster there is no sound! I've double checked all of the connections - but there is definitely no audio! The SPDIF connector does not work either! There is no humming - nothing at all!

I'm not even sure what fault this suggests - all of the ICs seem to have power.

I'm starting to take a strong dislike to this CD player :) It does not want to be repaired I think :D

I've done a few more checks on the CD5500 this evening to try and work out what its latest issue is. My thinking is that the muting circuit has somehow got activated - which would be the simplest explanation.

When a CD is playing I have a small voltage (just under 2v) at pin 7 of IC11 and IC12. When I stop the CD this drops to 0v. Looking at the wiring I'm wondering if this voltage would be the 'audio' signal. Unfortunately I don't have a scope so can't determine anything more. If I then test on the other side of C111 and C211 there are 0v again which suggests the circuit has been grounded - effectively muting the audio.

I also have -15v at the base for TR103 and 203 - which presumably would switch on the transistor and ground the audio.

Am I understanding this circuit correctly? If so is there any simple cause that could lead to it getting activated?

Thanks