Most systems will spin the disc then focus (this certainly applies to all
Philips units - in fact I've never seen a system that does otherwise).

Usually the startup sequence is something like this:

* Home the OPU (to the inside of the disc)
* Attempt to spin the disc. New PC drives can tell by the acceleration of
the spindle whether there is a disc present or not, although I doubt an 80's
player will do this. If there is no disc present according to this check
then stop.
* While spinning turn the laser on and try and catch focus (apply a ramp
signal to the focus actuators)
* If focus is caught turn on radial feedback loops
* Go and find the TOC etc...

All players / drives will always home the OPU before trying to catch focus
as the outside of the disc may contain no data (or it may be of the 8cm
type).

So by the sounds of your problem the motor, motor driver or motor driver
supply section is bad.

Martin.


"Mark D. Zacharias" wrote in message
...
Your friend is wrong. It must focus FIRST, then spin the disc. Focus
fails,
no spin. Quite possibly a bad laser pickup. At the moment it "should"
spin,
try helping the disc spin by giving it a push. May take a couple tries. If
it takes off, even spinning weakly, the spindle motor is bad. Sometimes
they
can be fixed by spraying the brushes with cleaner. Let us know and if this
is the case maybe we can walk you through it.

Mark Z.


"Erik" wrote in message
om...
I forgot to mention that I checked all leads to pickup and motor, they
are ok. However, there is no voltage at the terminal the motor
connects to, probably the same thing for the coils at the
trackingdevice connection. When it tries to focus, I can see a dim red
light, apparently the laser is ok. There are a couple of boards in the
unit, but in this case I think a part of the RF/SERVO(f) board is
likely to be failing, the board is in two parts, the part where both
the motor and tracking connects to is a vertical mounted little board
on the larger mainboard, where the other cables from the pickup goes
to.

Hope you can help me on this one.

Thanks in advance, Erik