Onkyo DR-C500 "Disk Err" - Whats the fix?

On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 09:34:59 -0400, John Hudak Has Frothed:

It's a chronic problem. Read a bunch of people having problems with it not reading DVD/CDR reliably. Google - Onkyo DR-C500 disk error and read some for yourself.

As far as a solution goes, there may not be one. You could contact Onkyo tech and see if there is.

Yes, I found that even before I did the post. I figured by now the root cause would have been discovered and the 'universal' fix would be floating around. Perhaps the fix is to deep six the unit...lol If I were the owner, I'd be upset...$600 and about three years later its garbage...There ought to be a law...lol Thanks John

The pickup either needs cleaning or replacement. Hard to get to.

They do seem to pick up a layer of dust on the objective lens.

Philips mech (yick).

Mark Z.

Thanks for the reply Mark. Could you give me an idea where the pickup is located? Thanks John

I think I found it but not sure which phillips mechanism I have. I do have some doc on OPU66.30. Is that the one used in these units? Thanks John

I forgot to mention/ask, perhaps the tolerances that are set in the controller software is too tight or maybe they just got it wrong. Can the firmware be upgraded in these things? John

No upgrades for this model - I checked. Like I said, it's a pain to get into one of these. It's been a year at least since I've been into one. As best as I can recall and from looking at the service manual, you can't even SEE the pickup without a pretty major disassembly. There's a circuit board over the top of the mech, and the power supply at the rear needs to come out also. Huge PITA, courtesy of Philips. The thing is, they don't want these things worked on once they're out of warranty - we are just expected to replace it with another piece of crap so that we can continue to keep feeding the Chinese army.

I'm going to try sending you via e-mail a couple graphics lifted from the service manual.

Mark Z.