I recently replaced the CDRW on a Yahama AW16G. I'd gone to another couple of forums for information and instead I ended up posting a complete guide to replacing the drive myself.
If anyone ever needs to do this, the replacement drive I bought is a UJDA360. They fit Dell laptops and may be labelled as such by sellers. The drives aren't sold with the front panel with the eject button, so this has to be removed from the old drive and fitted to the replacement one.
One - fitting the front panel with the eject button
As a general guide for the whole thing, reckon on one minute the change the drive, and days/months/years/a lifetime to refit the front panel.
Unscrew the guard under the drive and the two screws on the bottom of the AW16G which hold the drive in place. Grip each side of the drive to avoid damaging the front panel, and pull the drive out.
Unscrew the metal guide rail on the side of the drive and fit it to the new drive.
You may be lucky, but in my case one of the two screws fixing the front panel was immovable. The other one popped out with about two turns and made a mad leap for freedom. They're very small, but if you work in a completely bare room, and have a torch and an electron microscope you should be ale to find it again. Just having a magnetic screwdriver may save you, but don't bank on it.
The front panel clips into place, thankfully, so it stays while you fix the screws.
Slide the drive back into place and push gently home. Replace the securing screws and the black cover.
two - configuration
This is very important. The drive worked perfectly when I originally tested it, but at that point I only tested it by playing a CD. When I came to do a backup I got write errors and `no media' errors. It's important to configure the drive using the 16G's internal settings.
Press the CD button and go down to SETTING. I think the crucial one is the Underrun Protect, which should be enabled. My settings are: Media erase: SIMPLY. Audio write: speed x4; WRITE; Underrun protect: ENABLE. Data write: speed x8; COMPARE; Motor on: ACCESS. So long as Underrun Protect is enabled, the new drive should work perfectly.
Websites: http://www.musicbysweep.com
and http://theSynthiMusicSite.infinite9ths.com
Glad you were able to work out a solution! I think I saw your posts on another forum as I browse several sites for AW1600 info. I'm getting ready to do my first big project on the AW1600, I recorded our churches Christmas Music Program on Dec. 11th, Now I need to do the mixdown of all the tracks and produce a finished CD for them to sell. I'll also be learning how to use my Lightscribe drive to burn a label on the CDs, so I'll get a lot of education through trial and error the next few days.
Clyde
DX7IIFD, SY77, SY99, Hammond C3, Steinway L, CP300, AW1600, etc.
to "Sweep"
I joined this site mostly to thank you very much for posting this CD drive solution. I followed it through with no problems. It went exactly as you said. You are a saviour. I've been quite successful using the aw 16g and I will browse to see if can help others. I wasn't even aware of this forum.
Hi. I'm glad it was useful. Thanks should also go to the people on another forum (I think it was the Yahoo AW4416 group) who told me which drive to get.
I'd add a couple of other points regarding protecting your recordings. One or both may be helpful:
1) Buy a second AW16G. They're a lot cheaper than they used to be. I got one from ebay for £200 and more recently one for about £150 or maybe less. So if my original one fails completely I can still access my backups.
2) Save each track/pair of tracks as a WAV file. That way if you don't have an AW16G you can still import the tracks into anything else you may want to use. In practice it means doing a mix for each track so you can save it as a WAV and transfer it to a PC drive, DVDR or whatever. So it may take a while, but at least you're protected for all eventualities. This also frees up the CDRWs you used for backups for the AW16G. It may be advisable to add click tracks to the WAV files so you can sync them if you ever need to bring them into any kind of multitrack in the future.
I found saving the WAV files interesting as I found odd things that I'd done that had been buried in the mix.
Websites: http://www.musicbysweep.com
and http://theSynthiMusicSite.infinite9ths.com
Well that was 8 YEARS ago, but you might see this....
My AW 1600 just stopped putting out sound. The meters are jumping and I tested the speakers and headphones on other gear, they work
It happened last week, then came back on. I thought I messed u, maybe I did.
Then it happened again tonight. Can't get the sound out.
