I have a few of these drives, and wanted to see how different they were from the more commonly found "caddy" drives inside the AppleCD SC Plus, CD150, and so on. This example I show below is not currently working. My thought was to repair it in the same way I've done in the past - replace the leaking SMD capacitors on the logic board. Oh my is this a different beast. I've never seen anything online regarding this model of drive, so I am hoping to change that. Warning - lots of photos below!

Here's the top side of the drive mechanism.



Front view.



Side view. 1988 - wow this is an early CD Drive!



Rear view. So many interconnect cables.



This is what the drive looks like separated from the bottom portion. I believe this board handles SCSI data and audio. More interconnect cables...





This is what it looks like with the top logic board removed. This was a pain. Those yellow wire bundles are connected tight on each end. Still no sign of any leaky SMD caps.



Eject system. The yellow colored gear looks familiar. Hope it's not as brittle as those found on the auto-inject floppy drives.



Close up of the drive controller PCB.



Underside with the plate removed, exposing the laser.



One more view inside, a little closer.

Like I mentioned, this drive isn't currently working. Neither LED on the small PCB illuminate, and it won't read any discs. I was really hoping it would be as simple as swapping some capacitors, but there aren't any leaking from what I can see. Cleaning the laser lens didn't do anything either. I recently bought an oscilloscope, so maybe I'll start there. Tough to figure out what I need to look for without schematics, but that's all part of the fun!

I've had some experience working with slightly-later IBM-branded caddy drives, which are all Toshiba OEM. In fact a YouTuber recently detailed a repair attempt -- here's the link in case it's useful:


I agree this era of optical devices is stunning in terms of complexity and complication. Add to that the unknowns of laser calibration and unintended downstream effects of replacing capacitors, and I figure it's sort of a crapshoot.

But I also remember using a CDSC in 1988, hooked up to a monochrome Mac, and being amazed by the amount of information Apple's demonstration CD managed to pack in. They're worth trying to repair, no matter what the odds...