I loaded two dvd's in the tray... wondering what happened inside

msea4ever

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I have an old desktop PC with a vertical loading DVD tray. It was dark and I foolishly loaded a second dvd ontop of a dvd that was already in there. I pressed the button and the computer took them both in.

I soon realized that it wasn't reading anything. I didn't hear any grinding or crunching noises so it seems like the motor just didn't move. The icon did not identify any DVD Title either.

My question is: What happened inside? Did the extra width of 2 dvds (instead of one) jam the motor or did the motor just not start at all?

I'm not sure if anyone will know the answer. But I am curious as to the inner workings.

Would love to hear opinions. The dvd player seems to work fine now... with just one disk in it! But I am concerned I might have worn out the motor a bit by jamming it. :neutral:
 
The motor would likely not have enough torque to move; for a short time this is fine and indeed exactly what happens when you turn on a stationary motor; extended periods of this could burn out the motor or controller as you've put it in a stall, this causes the current to increase a ton over a normal functioning free spinning motor due to no opposing feedback voltage being generated by the magnets in the motor.

Here's a good post about it https://robotics.stackexchange.com/questions/613/what-is-stall-current-and-free-current-of-motors
And this http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/sc545_notes04/back_emf.html
 
Thank you for that and the links. It helps me to understand the electricity behind the heat that could burn out a motor.

I was hoping that some rubber wheel or clamp mechanism did not fully engage due to the extra width, and therefore the motor never electrically started.

But I can't know because I can't see what's going on inside the DVD unit. Even if I took the DVD unit out of the PC, I still would not be able to see!

Anyhow it works. And it was only a minute or two of inaction---whatever it was. :silent:
 
It's doubtful it caused any permanent damage. IMO, nothing to worry about.

Thanks. Well, it is just a secondary computer that I picked up from Craigslist. I use it mostly for watching DVDs so I won't burn out the drive on my best computer!

I do not like vertical loading designs. Seems illogical and risky to me. Easy to scratch disks...
 
You could get an external DVD drive and use it instead if you really dislike the vertical design!

I personally wouldn't have worried about the DVD drive on my best computer. A replacement drive is probably less expensive than another entire computer. However, I would have gotten an exterior drive to play movies before I would have purchased a whole 2nd computer from Craigslist.
 
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Ah but this was a deal. 30 bucks Cdn. for a Windows 7 machine that plays video smoothly. That would be about 20-25 bucks your currency! I plan to dual boot with Lubuntu when the greedy Windows barons pull the plug on Win 7 updates. (just kidding). :)
 
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