Philips CDI 450 – Laser Replacement

5Sep/200

Philips CDI 450 – Laser Replacement

The Philips CD-i (Compact Disc-Interactive) brand/tech was released back in 1990 to add a level of interactivity to CD-ROM based entertainment. Philips, from 1990 through to 1998, produced and released multiple devices for both the home and educational markets based on this technology. One of those models was the CDI 450 and I just happened to stumble across one a long time back at a Belgian flea market. It's been in a box for quite a while and I've only just gotten around to looking at it... The driving factors were: #1 COVID lockdown is driving me crazy and #2 there's a version of The 7th Guest for this unit!

The unit came with the power supply, a controller with it's face missing and, randomly, a game CD in the drive.

The controller was obviously useless, so I went to GAME OVER? in Amsterdam and picked up the cheapest controller I could find.

There's the standard rule of 'sunk cost' where you don't spend large amounts of money on something that could be dead. I then returned to Australia and the unit has been in the box since. Only recently did I turn it on...

Cool! It works! My French is rusty, so I wanted to try and get other games working. No matter what I tried, the unit would not read CDRs. Every google search I tried lead me to believe that the laser was gone, or going, so I scoured eBay for a replacement. It turns out that searching for VAM-1201 will give you shops in China that have the exact 'new old stock' component that I needed! I ordered one, expecting it to take years, instead having it arrive in just under two weeks!

Popping open the CDI was easy enough. There are four screws in the unit. Two are in the CD bay and two are in the 'optional module area' to the left. Open the CD lid and then remove the plastic shell to the left. It has two clips that need to be pushed in. Woah, what's this? My unit has the Digital Video Cartridge!

With the screws out, you'll now find the RF shield in the way... remove this evenly, prying it up from each corner and making sure there are no wires in the way.

Mine had a lovely amount of discolouration... maybe from the rain that was falling in the flea market in Belgium? Fortunately the motherboard looked pristine.

The Laser aparatus consists of the laser unit and drive motor in a plastic housing, attached to a metal plate via rubber suspension joints. This whole component is held in place by the two screws from the main case and two plastic lugs along the top frame. Gently lift the whole lot, evenly pulling it up. The top two lugs are quite tight, to make sure to ease the unit vertically away from them until it's free. Once done, don't lift too high as you'll first need to disconnect the data ribbon cable and power cables underneath.

Once done, you then need to remove the laser unit from the metal plate. It's held there by four rubber spacers. Note that these are old now, so be very gentle when sliding them out laterally from the slots in the laser housing. I managed to break one when doing so, but fortunately this didn't impact the ability of the unit.

Once you've slotted the new laser on the housing, place it back into the main unit. This is as simple as lining up the lugs at the top, holding the unit at 45-degrees whilst doing so. Note that the wired cable might be longer than the original... just place the wires somewhere in the spacing to the bottom-right. Also make sure the wires don't get pinched when you place the RF shielding back in!

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