Recent JVC X'Eye Fix with pictures..

[Oldskool]

As stated in another thread, I was having an issue with my X'Eye not reading discs. It would say the classic X'Eye error "Put a disc on the turn table". This can mean many things on an X'Eye. A faulty lid switch, a bad laser, or in my case a faulty lense cover.

Had I remembered that I dropped my X'Eye onto my tile floor about 2 or 3 weeks ago I would have known to look for something broken, but this was a problem I was having months before. Dropping it just made it a bit worse.

I suspect that any X'Eye that's been banged around a bit (which is just about all of them judging by the looks of most of them), may very well have this issue, and it's one that's been overlooked as I have never heard anyone else with the same issue, nor have I ever had this issue with any CD based console before.

Basically her symptons even before the drop was that it would load and play CD's but you could hear a slight scraping sound as the disc was being rotated. I did figure out that the inside of the CD right near the hole was slightly rubbing on the cd lense cover. I wrongly thought that the spindle was mis-aligned causing it to slightly rub. I would tweak the spindle a little bit and it would stop rubbing, for a while.

As mentioned, recently I dropped my X'Eye. Yes I know shame on me. And it was even when I was giving it a good wipe-down (damn Vegas dust.. ERGH).

I noticed that ever sense then the noise was a bit more loud and annoying, but it still worked. Then finally a few days ago it stopped reading discs all-together. "Put a disc on the turn table". I basically just jumped to the conclusion that I had a bad laser, as many people have found out.

Now I wonder if many people were really having a laser issue or not. Before jumping to the conclusion like I did I recommend to inspect the lense cover first.

Take the top of the X'Eye off and inspect the lense cover pedestals. They should all be sitting flush on the surface below them. In my case, all but one was broken, causing a mis-alignment of the lense cover. Causing the CD to rub, and even causing the laser not to focus properly (for whatever reason.

Here you can see the broken pedestals still attached to the lense cover. And if you look closely enough, you can see where the inside of the cd was scraping.



You can see that the pedestals are still mounted onto the lense cover, when they should not be. The lense cover shoud only come off by removing the screws. This seems like a very chintzy design.



So once I figured out that the lense cover was broke, I decided to put the cover back onto the X'Eye and start it up without the cover to see if it made any difference. Excuse the Las Vegas dust. I really do try to keep it to a minimum but it's a neverending battle. I even keep it covered with a towel when I am not using it.



I put in Sol Feace (Excellent game, btw). And guess what, it booted just fine, without any noise and without hesitation. Judging how cheap the pedestals appear to be I suspect that any X'Eye could have this problem even if the cover is just slightly mis-aligned and even if it's not making a noise .

So what did I do to fix this?



Good old super glue. That's basically how the pedestals are installed from the factory, so that's how it went back together.

With everything level games are booting perfectly and very quietly. While everything was open I put a little bit of anti-sieze grease on the gears and now it even accesses the disc quieter.

She's purring like a kitten.