Hello.
My slow quest for finding more NeXT accessories continued recently as I came across a N3010 CD-ROM drive on eBay, sold as non-working. Located in EU (belgium) so shipping wasn't too bad and I grabbed it. The seller has, at the time of writing this, another drive available on eBay, too with similar description.
I did not power up the drive but went straight to taking it apart for checkup as I knew these old Sony drives (this being a Sony CDU-541-1N) are very likely have bad caps and need recapping.
The power supply (a very nice and solid Mitsumi part) had no visible damage and the caps looked still pristine. I tested the PSU separately and it was working just fine (but I recapped it anyway for good measure). The PSU has just four electrolyics (I did not replace the big primary side cap as these are usually fine anyway): 1500/16 and 2200/10 (in low-ESR type), and 1000/16 and 1000/10.
20251128_175033.jpeg
Regarding the drive itself, a long story short: all the SMD caps on the drive controller PCB had indeed leaked and had caused a blotch of corrosion on the other side of the board. There is a group of four SMD caps just on the other side, and it seems that the vias next to them provided a clear path for the cap-juices to flow thru...
20251119_193242.jpeg
This was the view on another part of the board once the SMD caps were removed:
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Also the drive had some surface rust on drive's top shield near the drive door, the rear-panel grounding post and audio output jacks:
20251119_194725.jpeg
For parts list and more pics check out Astrontech's site: http://www.asterontech.com/Asterontech/next_cdrom_refurb.html
Once the caps were removed I scraped off some of the corrosion, washed the board with vinegar, then water, then IPA and let it dry. I then cleaned the affected areas again with a brush and IPA. Under microscope all the traces appear to be fine, so I added some clear nail polish to cover the exposed areas. And finally I replaced the caps. I used ceramic capacitors where I could, and a couple of new SMD caps (as my supplier didn't have proper sized ceramics for that spot).
A nice design touch is that the drive can be powered up with the PCB on the side:
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I was able to insert a disc (although sometimes this took couple of tries, I later on cleaned some microswitches inside the mechanism and that seems to have cured it) and I could hear the drive tracking, the laser focusing and the drive succesfully reading the TOC (as it didn't spit the disc out).
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I can see at least two small axial electrolytic caps on the motor regulator PCB deep inside the drive, but there was no visible leakage there and I didn't want to fully disassemble the drive so I let them be for now. Also couple of small electrolytics on the front panel audio out/eject-button board, but visibly ok.
Testing with a computer (my HP712/60 with NeXTStep as that was at hand) showed that I was able to play an audio cd just fine thru the headphone output (although the jack and the volume control were very scratchy, these I also cleaned later) but the drive was indeed working, great! :) I'll need to test with some data discs but it's looking promising.
I have yet to see those radials fail out of several dozen drives I've done. It's really painful to dig that far in.
Nice job. I have a "white unit" (the identical unit branded Apple) and a few years ago it just became unusable. No surprise, all caps basically had failed.
Not much damage, but in the process I lost one audio channel. Will need to go back on that one and try to recover the situation.
Great work! May I ask a little off-topic question? Can you run these commands on the working NeXT branded drive and post the outputs?
scsimodes /dev/rsd0a
scsimodes -C /dev/rsd0a
scsimodes -v /dev/rsd0a
Depending on your setup you may have to replace rsd0a with the actual device number of the CD-ROM drive.
@Archer: great to hear. The PSU caps were also ok so it seems that generally it's only the SMD caps from this era that are dying by now. What failure modes you usually see with these drives, do they stop reading or keep ejecting discs?
Quote from: andreas_g on Nov 30, 2025, 02:02 PMGreat work! May I ask a little off-topic question? Can you run these commands on the working NeXT branded drive and post the outputs?
Sure, see below. This was using a PC CD-ROM - which mounted OK and I was able to copy all the files so I am pretty confident the drive is now working 8)
scsimodes /dev/rsd1a
SCSI information for /dev/rsd1a
Drive type: SONY CD-ROM CDU-541
0 bytes per sector
0 sectors per track
8 tracks per cylinder
14909184 cylinder per volume (including spare cylinders)
0 spare sectors per cylinder
0 alternate tracks per volume
73482 usable sectors on volume
scsimodes -C /dev/rsd1a
0
scsimodes -v /dev/rsd1a
plh_len = 0
plh_medium = 0
plh_wp = 0
plh_blkdesclen = 0
bd_density = 0
bd_nblk = 0
bd_blklen = 0
dfp_savable = 0
dfp_pagecode = 5
dfp_pagelen = 4
dfp_trkszone = 58171
dfp_altsecszone = 0
dfp_alttrkszone = 0
dfp_alttrksvol = 0
dfp_sectors = 0
dfp_bytessector = 0
dfp_interleave = 0
dfp_trkskew = 0
dfp_cylskew = 0
dfp_ssec = 0
dfp_hsec = 0
dfp_rmb = 0
dfp_surf = 0
plh_len = 2
plh_medium = 32
plh_wp = 0
plh_blkdesclen = 24
bd_density = 0
bd_nblk = 0
bd_blklen = 2097176
rdp_savable = 0
rdp_pagecode = 5
rdp_pagelen = 0
rdp_maxcyl = 14909184
rdp_maxheads = 8
rdp_wpstart = 103
rdp_rwcstart = 6619136
rdp_steprate = 0
rdp_landcyl = 0
last logical block=73482
block length=2048
Thank you very much! I will use the information to make Previous' CD-ROM drive simulation more accurate.
So awesome! and congrats on saving the drive!