A colleague and friend of mine once told me that “before being able to do a small thing, you have to go jump thru a thousand hoops.” And he was right. I verified his observation many times. Today was yet another confirmation. I needed a video feed to test a device. I naturally turned to my go-to Laserdisc player (yes, I felt for the technology, I am one of those).
It was sitting on a garage shelf for the last four-five years. I undusted it and installed it. Unfortunately, after inserting an LD and pressing Play, I obtained a U1 error, followed by the player spitting the disc back at me. Really?!
The Pioneer CLD-D515 is a great and reliable player. It is dual-sided and dual-standard (PAL and NTSC). I bought mine in Europe, so it requires 240V provided by a step-up converter. Besides, it always worked like a charm and was working when I stored it away. Well, the problem was the belt used to spin-up the disc, a well-known issue with these players. Luckily, it is not a Sony, so the square 4” belt is a standard one (SCA4.0).
Replacing the best is very simple: remove the cover, the disc tray and the belt appears on the front-left side. Swap-out the deficient belt with the new rubbery one, and close it up. We are done! Now that I did all this, I finally can look into that video feed. But that’s for another day.
