Help!! Laseractive disc tray stuck

[Vlcice]

The drive tray on my Laseractive is stuck and I'm kind of freaking out. Anyone have any advice on fixing it?

Background: I accidentally shut the power off to the LA while it was in the savegame management menu on the NEC PAC. When I restored power, it correctly closed the tray. However, it now makes a faint whirring sound when trying to access the disc and will not eject the tray anymore. There is a disc stuck in there and it doesn't seem to recognize it. I tried removing the NEC PAC and accessing the drive using the physical buttons from the PAC-less interface, with no luck.

[CRTGAMER]

My Pioneer LD-1100 would also hang on eject sometimes. I used a thin file to coax the front flip down cover to open which in turn allows the tray to come out. A small amount of 3in1 oil at the "hinges" helps.

[Niku-Sama]

what brand/model is it?

[xelement5x]

what brand/model is it?

There is only one LaserActive system that exists. The CLD-A100 from Pioneer.


Is the tray not even attempting to eject? Or is it trying to eject and gets stuck? Mine periodically gets stuck during eject so I just push down lightly yet firmly on the tray front and it will dislodge. I've done this dozens of times with mine based on the advice from a LA repair guru and never had an issue.

If you're super paranoid you can take the cover off and see what's happening. If I take the cover off the tray normally seems to dislodge, but this is a common issue with this LaserDisc player.

[APE992]

The LaserActive has a million and one issues relating to gears, thankfully some donors can be found in similarly built Pioneer players. I've got a CLD-1580K that works wonderfully but looks like a candidate for donor parts if I ever found a broken LaserActive.

The main problem is that without the inserts the LaserActive came with shipping it for any reason can create more problems than it starts with.

In this case I'd imagine the tray isn't aligned correctly, if it was fully ejected manually (a very delicate process that easily results in more breakage if you aren't familiar with the inner workings) it might be able to retract the tray itself and fix itself. I saw a player that had a jammed self-rotating laser head not recognize anything until it was unjammed and regreased. Ceramic grease seems to work really well for these purposes. AVOID WD40, it will make your problems worse.

[BlueBMW]

Have you tried opening the outer shell of your laseractive (4 philips screws on the sides, and 5 on the back) and then powering the unit on and gently coaxing the tray back out? As others have said, the trays tend to get out of alignment and jam. Usually you can grease the tracks / gears some and it will resume proper function again.

[Vlcice]

I'll give that a try - thanks. A little stressful since a game is trapped in there, but I'm sure I can keep from damaging it.

[BlueBMW]

I'll give that a try - thanks. A little stressful since a game is trapped in there, but I'm sure I can keep from damaging it.

When you give the signal to eject, the Laser mechanism / spindle should drop down and away from the disc. if it doesnt or gets stuck trying to go down, you can help it also. The spindle lifts the disc up and clamps it against a bearing clamp above. So either way, before you can open the tray, the laser / spindle mechanism will be clear. if you are concerned though, you can unscrew the top PCB and fold it over the side out of the way, and unscrew the disc clamp bar and then you can remove your LD. Dont do this while its powered on (since you'll have that one board just kind of floating where it may touch another board)

If you look at the laser swap guide I posted, you can follow the first few steps if its not clear which pieces to move to get to your disc

http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=4434.0