Hi again.
Well I came home tonight and plugged the player in and it had forgotten its code on restart. This doesn't surprise me as I'm pretty sure there is no storage on this thing. Anyway, I tried to play a CD and it set H0 again.
I took it downstairs to the tinker room and opened it up. When it mounts the CD you hear the whine of the motor controller but it doesn't move one degree. If you push the disc you can get it to read the TOC and attempt to play but it can never hit the required RPM. One time it set P0. I don't know what that is, but its probably because I was pushing the disc.
I'm wondering if there is too much friction in the spindle bearing (causing the higher current code) and how to determine what "too much" is. To me it feels like too much when I spin it by hand. I'd assume this would spin very freely since it has no PMs, right?
Tomorrow I'm going to take apart some other players and see how smooth their spindle bearings are by comparison.
I watch a lot of LDs guys.