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M700 optical drive apparently blocked - can drive be swapped? How to load K firmware?

J

jfh

Well-known member
Discs are no longer loading properly into my M700 optical drive - disc goes in about 1/4 way and then stops. Multiple retries with same problem and then the disc ejects.

The optical drive is a Panasonic UJ265 but a sticker seems to indicate there is special Kaleidescape firmware. If I get a new drive (which seem readily available) is there a way to load the K firmware to it?
 
If the disc never actually goes into the optical drive, it is difficult to assume the problem is with the optical drive itself (since the disc is never actually inserted). Have you ruled out other issues with other components of the vault? Have you watched the actions of the vault with the cover removed? If not, that can give a lot of insight into what is going on.

Andy


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Be sure rollers are clean. Have you tried to help it feed manually? (meaning when it hesitates to feed, have to pushed it slightly?)

Also, some discs are much thicker than others, and these can sometimes have problems feeding.

Jim
 
andy said:
If the disc never actually goes into the optical drive, it is difficult to assume the problem is with the optical drive itself (since the disc is never actually inserted). Have you ruled out other issues with other components of the vault? Have you watched the actions of the vault with the cover removed? If not, that can give a lot of insight into what is going on.

Andy


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
This is all observed with the cover off. The disc is inserted through the front panel and sits properly. After hitting OK the turntable moves the disc to the optical drive and inserts in but it only goes in about an inch. It pushes the disc back to the carousel and tries a few more times before ejecting the disc as unreadable.

I’m only assuming there is something in the optical drive that is preventing the disc from being loaded because that’s what it looks like. I can’t move the rollers enough to see inside to see if there is actually anything physically preventing the disc from being inserted and am afraid of breaking something if I force them.

There aren’t that many moving parts and everything works as I expected it did cataloging hundreds of discs before the failure. Support recommended cleaning with a brush cleaner but that got physically stuck at the drive entrance which is what prompted me to take the cover off in the first place.

A new drive is pretty cheap; that’s why I thought of removing/replacing the drive but I suspect that will be futile unless I can get the K firmware loaded

I have “helped” some discs go through the front slot but didn’t try to “help” going into the optical drive so I can try that but discs that I’m trying now are discs that were successfully catalogued before.
 
If you’ve cleaned both rollers going into the optical drive already then I’d agree that there is something wrong with the optical drive or something is stuck inside.

Good luck,
Andy


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
The drive is fairly easy to remove from the assembly, so I'd pop it out to inspect (and try manually inserting if it looks clear.) Should also give a free shot at the manual eject button, in case a prior disc is trying to squat.

Not sure about any firmware being too special, as I think some have mentioned replacing their drives before (and I've hooked one up to a computer for testing with no issue.)
 
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Not sure about the drive in the vault but the ones in the players are easy to replace, very standard and low cost so perhaps just try a drive and see if it works if it is the actual drive giving the problem and not the rollers / kicker mechanism that loads the disks.
 
Mark H said:
Not sure about the drive in the vault but the ones in the players are easy to replace, very standard and low cost so perhaps just try a drive and see if it works if it is the actual drive giving the problem and not the rollers / kicker mechanism that loads the disks.
Click to expand...
How do you load the K firmware?
 
Roderick Spode said:
I don't believe there is any firmware. Just swap the drive and hook it up and it should work.
Click to expand...
Can’t hurt to try I guess. Probably less expensive than the official K replacement. I just assumed there is K firmware because there is a label that says Kaleidescape HW 1.0 KFW 1.0
 
For anyone interested- K support says there isn’t any proprietary firmware so I’ve ordered an OEM drive and will hope that’s all it takes.
 
If Support says there's no custom FW on the drive, I believe them. I do remember that we had asked a vendor for custom firmware on an optical drive at one point just to tweak disc recognition speed a bit. When you insert a disc into a drive that supports multiple disc formats (e.g., CD, DVD, Blu-Ray), it has to sequentially check to see which type of disc was inserted, before it can proceed to actually reading the disc. We asked them to change the order in which the drive was making that check, which sped up disc recognition.

I don't honestly remember which drive that was and what the revised order was -- just thought you guys might find that interesting. If you were to replace a drive with that firmware with one with stock firmware, everything would still work; it would just take a few extra seconds to recognize an inserted disc.
 
Finally got a replacement drive (Panasonic UJ265) from China. Easy swap (except for putting the tiny hex screws back on!). Running normally now. Cleaned the rollers while I had the original drive removed. They certainly aren’t easy to rotate.

Didn’t notice any (obvious/significant) time difference In cataloging discs, but I haven’t loaded it full yet. Kind of fun watching things work with the cover off.

Couldn’t figure out a way to clear whatever the physical obstruction in the original drive.

I’m not going to keep the M700 but if I were I’d get an extra optical drive while they are still available.

Would still like to see K provide an inexpensive cataloging solution. Hook up a BluRay drive to your computer, register it to your server and pop in a disc. Plug and play hardware with an Ethernet port would be cool, but probably unnecessary for occasional cataloging needs.
 
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