Why Laserdisc? I’ll leave that for the prequel.
I’ve been on the hunt for a laserdisc player. I considered just buying one off eBay but I thought I should at least try to find one locally. After about a month of this I was about to give-up, and then a bizarre coincidence occurred.
We went to a local theater dinner event and were seated with two other couples at a table. We talked about various local interests but most of the conversation centered on the Star Wars themed Halloween decorations we’ve been building.
The next day Jamie received a message on Facebook from one of our table mates from the previous night. It turns out he was on Facebook and it showed him a post Jamie had made a week or so ago seeking a laserdisc player for me. It just so happened that he had a couple in the attic (along with some discs) and he would be willing to sell the whole kit to us for $100.
Why two? Turns out he received one as a gift when it was new but years later the auto-flip mechanism failed so he picked up an identical unit on eBay with the intention of using it to fix his original player. He never got around to this and the two players eventually ended up in the attic. I was really excited about this because even if one didn’t work it came with a full set of spares.
When we got it all home we flipped through the discs and were overjoyed to find a bunch of great titles including the original Star Wars! We hooked the unboxed unit up to the TV and loaded up the Star Wars disc.
Everything worked great, the disc even flipped itself successfully but when we decided to call it a night and eject the disc in the middle of side two, the player made some “clunks” and then a continuous grinding noise.
A bunch of stuff happened after that and I didn’t have time to deal with the player for a few days. Tonight I had a few minutes to spare in the lab so I thought I’d take a whack and at least see if I could get the disc back out.
I was reminded of what a pleasure it is to work on pre-2000’s electronics. No tape, no glue, just nice large screws and a cabinet that was designed to be disassembled.
It didn’t take long to see where the noise was coming from. There is a rack and pinion in the auto flip mechanism that had a little too much slop and would disengage during the process of moving the laser pickup from one side to the other.
After some poking at it and searching the web for ideas I found a simple, elegant solution: a zip tie.
After a few failed attempts at fitting it without interfering with other moving parts I found a fit that worked and like magic the player came back to life!
I’m going to do some more extended testing to make sure the fix holds, but if it does I’ll be pulling the other unit apart soon to apply the same fix.
Now I just need to find a way to cram this thing into the shallow fireplace shelf in the living room…