JUNK STEREO REPAIR (final) UPDATEWell I phone my friend to hell him about the bad news. He said no worries you tired at least...
His wife still wants the thing back since it belongs to work / retirement home, not hers. Plus, the radio and turn table are still working...
And the CD player is also kinda working.... kinda. She was complaining about that part as well, on top of the USB issue.
Problem was the open/close button was hard at hearing at the best of times, and when it did hear you, the tray would do weird things...
so I though hey, let's see if I can fix that at least.... no luck with that either
1) Open/close button : I pressed it2 hundred times to exercise/clean it, see if that would improve things. Didn't... at all. Now it's 100% unresponsive. No worries, I will just replace that switch. Board is easy to remove from the cabinet, and it's standard tactile switch, have lots in stock. So I pull that board and inspect the switch... no cracked solder joints hmmm.... buzzed it... eh ? It works just fine, doesn't miss a beat !
Shit, not a simple fix then, what gives... So I start reverse engineering the thing, hoping that would be quick. Again no luck here, gave up on it ! There are 6 buttons, not a whole lot so I was hoping it would be simple with a common and individual pull-ups then go straight to a dedicated I/O pin on the CPU for each button. Sure looked like it at first, with the ground plane clearly being common to all witches.
So then tried to locate the pull-up for the switch.... no luck. contact goes to one resistor... then buggers off to a 0R jumper resistor, then buggers off much farther to... 3 more resistors and a cap... then fro that point still no connection to nay pn on the CPU, so there mus be more circuitry involved. These last resistors also were connected to a connector /flat flex that supplies another Keypads board lower down in the cabinet. I fear there must be some analog multiplexing / fuckery going on, with the two boards intertwined. IOW, unless I am given schematic, it's hopeless. So I gave up on that... no more CD player on this stereo
2) Tray problem : found the problem. Not a broke/damage loading gear, not a tired belt... instead, underneath the tray there are teeth disposed in a straight line, that the motor meshed into. Well, the middle third of this toothed area is... absent, gone, broken off, disappeared, like someone took a hammer and hit them on the side to get them to break off of the tray. wow...
So since the first third was OK, the player was able to START opening the tray, then it stop and the motor would spin free, not being able to grip the tray anymore. So if you pulled the tray by hand then the motor gear would be able to catch again and complete the opening of the tray using the remaining teeth on the last third.
So. Tray is not repairable, open/close button neither.... total fail on the CD player as well ! This stereo really didn't want to live did it !
Date code on the CPU board says April 2016, so about 6 years old.. and already unrepairable in several accounts. And they dare to sell this thing still TODAY, for freaking 120 Euros !!!
At least the radio part still works.. but it's such a piece of shit, the user interface drove me nuts after just 10 seconds. The speed of the tuner is... slower than a 80 year old snail in a squeaky wheel chair.
So she will come to puck that turd soon... and maybe give another something.... she said there is a grand pa / pentionner in that retirement home that's got a borken CD player, one of his this time, does not belong to the retirement home. Drawer problems again, she said. I said bring it I will have a quick look you never know... idea is to declare the thing dead and ask to keep the unit to salvage the parts as I always do with stuff I am given that I fail to fix.... that's also why I keep accepting to look at broken old consumer stuff... most of the time it's not repairable and I get to keep the thing, si I can take it apart to keep the electronic stuff and scrap the rest just as soon. Thing is, here you are not allowed to take old electronic junk from the scrap yard. Everything is stored in a special container for recycling and you are not allowed to steal stuff from it... I tried, got burned. I got caught on camera and the guy running the site screamed at me....
So my only source of scrap boards/parts is the junk I am given to repair.