Go Video wont power on

go video will not power on

Ken,

I had a go video (sonic blue) dvd player that had a no power symptom. I mean NO power, no lights anywhere, nothing.

So I looked at the ps board to see if anything was amiss. First I noticed something that looked like a disc cap but was really a highly nonlinear resistor. (I forget what the name of this device was). It was pressed up an aluminum elctrolytic and the heat from it seemed to have melted some of the plastic wrap around the cap. I took the cap off and the thermister thing off the board and tested the cap with an cap meter it was fine. The thermister thing ohmed out fine too based on some datasheet I was able to find on the web for it's part number (which was still visible) (the thermister thing was to control inrush current at power up, it has high R when it is cold and then low r when it gets hot) the main current goes through it so it limits the surrent at start up. Anyway to make the long story come to an end I couldn't find anything wrong. That was about 1 year ago. then when I was looking over the unit a few days ago looking to find a donor spindle motor for my dead sony unit I notice that one of the electrolytics had blown it seal at the base (radial can). So I repalced the cap 1000uF, 16V, 105C (I think) and my sonic blue go video is back in action.
But then I remembered that the unit was terrible even before the power went out on it. It seems to have a tracking problem of some sort because I can't get it through even one dvd, even brand new ones of presumably, good quality. Typically it will freeze at the same spot on a given dvd. When I play that dvd on another good player that spot will trun out to be a spot where the good player will pause a bit so figure it's a spot in the data where there seems to be some sort of stress on the tracking. Also it has a better success rate in the first half of the dvd. On a movie feature dvd it can't get to the later chapters, only the early ones. Even on a 45 minute brand new charlie brown xmas it can't make it to the end so it doesn't seem to be just a problem at a layer switch. The lens is clean, the tracks are lubed, the focus coil seems to works fine because when you close the door with no disc you can see it move in and out trying to acquire before it replies no disc. Still I think it's a focus thing because on one new dvd I put in I could swear that the lens was bumping into the disc because the disc had a several rings around it that were not there before I started the experiment.

anyone have any suggestions on that

Dave