Okay, so I am still having no love from the Sega CD Model 2. That switch is something that nobody I know who knows electronics has ever encountered, so I don't know if I could re-solder it if I needed to. But the thing is, I get continuity through the switch when it is touched by the laser assembly. I don't know if it's pushing enough to make the contact more than intermittently. If I could think of some way to extend the plastic housing even a couple of millimeters would probably be enough to make certain the switch trips.


HOWEVER, I have news on the Sega CD Model 1 front. Thanks to Oldskool's post in another thread that I found in a search just today, I opted to look into the drive belt rather than the timing gear for my model 1.Oldskool posted this:
Quote Originally Posted by Oldskool View Post

I always recommend a new belt too. It can cause all sorts of odd things to happen, the most common one is that it will eject the cd as soon as you put it in. Just because the belt looks ok doesn't mean that it is. They get stretched and have a difficult time raising up the laser assembly. Although, technically if you manually set the disc/laser assembly into the proper position you are basically doing the work of the belt. So for testing purposes it's not needed much.

Another thing - people worry too much about the aligning of the gears. They are engineered so that if they are out of place they somehow always end up back in the same position. I noticed this after trying to adjust gears for hours and hours, they always seemed to reset back to a default position. I think this is an engineered fail safe so that if the gear ever slips the console can set their positions. It achieves this when the laser assembly has been fully raised the gear will keep turning until it hits the stop on it. Of course if you have a worn belt it will not raise the laser assembly all the way up which will make you think it's the gears. Rather than wasting time with the gears (that are rarely ever actually broken) focus on the belt, the laser assembly hinges and the limit switches.
in This Thread I have no replacement belts, so I looked up this video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJJyELdj6t4, which showed me how to fully access the belt.



Even more importantly, the poster of the video made note that you can test to see if the belt is the issue by soaking the old belt in hot water for a few minutes and then replacing it. If the unit functions more readily, then that is likely the problem with the old constant door-opening problem.

He linked to this site: http://www.studiosoundelectronics.com/belts.htm#SBM with a recommendation for using part number SBM 3.0 (which as of the time of this posting costs $2.00 per belt)

I also took a look at the replacement unit that I bought (which did not power up) to gut for its drive assembly and found a scorched power board much like the one in this thread:Sega CD Model 1 Burnout. So I'm going to try to emulate what I see there with some solder and some replacement parts and see if I can't get the second unit up and running too.



I'd really still appreciate any help or thoughts on the Model 2 though, if anybody out there has any. At this point I've had the drive assembly completely apart as I mentioned before. And for some reason when I plug in just the logic board and trip the switch by hand, it will shut off the laser motor but when I reassemble it, even though the switch shows on my multimeter as tripped (I disconnect the power while holding the laser armature in place to check), it's not shutting off. It's odd.