With the help of an acquaintance, I just repacled the timekeeper battery, which only had 0.4V left, in a 21TCDI30 (TV with built-in CDI) but unfortunately it didn't fix really fix the main problem I had, i.e. playing DV content.
Although I was fearing he destroyed the player completely after he, during the breaking of the timekeeper, accidentally cut a trace on the PCB, then tried to fix it with soldering a wire across the gap (instead of waiting for me to buy some conductive paint). In this procedure he made the gap 100 times bigger, although some wire is soldered across now (I doubt it's actually properly connected).
However, to my surprise the player still works and saving of the time and settings is fixed but the actual problems are still exactly the same as before (booting and DV content).
Normal titles and audio cds work but DV titles and VCDs don't. Some titles just return to the player menu without even booting, some display "Disc is dirty", others display graphics but not the video that should be below them or simply return to the game's menu after selecting start.
Sometimes the player does not start at all, and it just is stuck during booting , displaying part or nothing of the philips logo. Powering on/off several times fixes that problem
Is there anything else to try and fix (cheaply)? Because I suspect it's the DV module (basically a PCB connected to the main board in this player) and finding a replacement for that seems impossible.
21TCDI30 problems
Well I bought a 22ER9956/40 DVC cartridge with an IMPEG board (removing it was quite easy). However, it turned out my 21TCDI30 did not have an IMPEG but VMPEG 5.1 board (the sticker on the back says 22ER9956/20)
I replaced the board anyway and the player is fixed !
Now I feel kinda bad we damaged the main board by breaking the timekeeper chip
The trace that is damaged went to the chip that says "Philips CDI 210". I'm suprised it still works...
I replaced the board anyway and the player is fixed !
Now I feel kinda bad we damaged the main board by breaking the timekeeper chip
![Sad :(](./images/smilies/icon_sad.gif)
Well turns out the player still have problems. After playing video for several minutes, playback hangs. If it's a videocd, playback continues after fast forward or play/pause. If it's a game, you usually can return to the menu or skip the video sequence. When the DVC is not being used, the game sometimes hangs completely and the player needs to be restarted. It was actually doing that from the beginning when I got it but I assumed it was because it didn't like CD-R media as I didn't have retail games at the time.
Possibly the player never worked properly and it was actually a test model (The version is 21TCDI30/01 which indicates "overseas" apparantly and it contained an older DVC cartrigde than cdifan mentioned). Years of storage in crappy conditions probably also didnt help.
Possibly the player never worked properly and it was actually a test model (The version is 21TCDI30/01 which indicates "overseas" apparantly and it contained an older DVC cartrigde than cdifan mentioned). Years of storage in crappy conditions probably also didnt help.