Presently looking at an Arcam Alpha CD player, it wont read or play and seems to struggle spinning the discs. Dropping it into the test mode I was getting error 3 and error 5.
Have already swapped out the 2x Philips axial caps on the mainboard (confirmed bad with tester) but it has made no difference. Have even tried a CDM4/19 laser mechanism out of a Technics player in it and it will not read with this either. Interestingly though when I tried the original CDM4/19 laser assembly out of the Arcam in the technics it won't read discs in there either.
Anyone have any idea on where to check next? Is it possible I have a dead laser unit and a dead motherboard on the Arcam?
Have already swapped out the 2x Philips axial caps on the mainboard (confirmed bad with tester) but it has made no difference. Have even tried a CDM4/19 laser mechanism out of a Technics player in it and it will not read with this either. Interestingly though when I tried the original CDM4/19 laser assembly out of the Arcam in the technics it won't read discs in there either.
Anyone have any idea on where to check next? Is it possible I have a dead laser unit and a dead motherboard on the Arcam?
Looks like a possible or related service manual is available: https://elektrotanya.com/arcam_alpha_9_cd_dac-board_sm.pdf/download.html
Not quite clear which model you have, a search for "Arcam Alpha CD Player CDM4/19" doesn't seem to turn up much.
Not quite clear which model you have, a search for "Arcam Alpha CD Player CDM4/19" doesn't seem to turn up much.
Looks like the original Arcam Alpha and Alpha Plus used these:
https://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/the_complete_d_a_dac_converter_list/
https://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/the_complete_d_a_dac_converter_list/
Yes indeed it is the original Arcam Alpha which after a lot of research seems to be a heavily modified Philips CD482
I did toy around with the 4.7k pot for the laser with the known good laser module in and from the test mode I am getting an attempted spin (not really spinning) and then error 7 but if I then tweak the pot slowly I can get it to spin and then throws Error 2. I'm presuming that getting Error 7 means the laser is working but that there is some processing error occurring.
I'm going to do a complete recap of the unit at this point as I cannot think of anything else to try unless there is a faulty chip somewhere.
I did toy around with the 4.7k pot for the laser with the known good laser module in and from the test mode I am getting an attempted spin (not really spinning) and then error 7 but if I then tweak the pot slowly I can get it to spin and then throws Error 2. I'm presuming that getting Error 7 means the laser is working but that there is some processing error occurring.
I'm going to do a complete recap of the unit at this point as I cannot think of anything else to try unless there is a faulty chip somewhere.