figueroa1357

I tryed to play maxwell burn c d on fac radio it did not work, is there anything else i can try before replacing head unit. I really like using the key on the sterring wheel.
T hanks in advance

Tatewaki

known issue on playing CD-R on 99 HU. Do a search and you'll find plenty of threads about it. One option is to swap with a 00+ TL HU

WellChosen

I had that problem but i have a 01 TL ..what you do is...when you make a CD burn it at a VERY VERY VERY low speed..no lie i burned it at 2x....yea i know pain in the ass to wait for it to finish but it works....the odd things ive noticed is that when you hold forward. it actually goes bizerk and goes to different tracks. If you burn at a low speed it shuld help your problem but dude change ur head unit. you can buy a relay to make your remote on the wheel work . just some advice.

Mang

khypermedia cdrs work fine for me. u can find them at office max.

TeknoKing

alright, this works: Burn CD-R at 8x, preferribly 4x. Try to get the CD-R that are blacked dyed, because it makes the light travel better, so the HU will read it better.
At least the above works for me, maybe it will work for you.

ResidualFreedom

I grabbed a CD/MP3 changer the other day from Tatewaki (his old one), for real cheap. I HATE sony explode but for the cost it was worth a tepm fix to the CDR problem. I stored the changer controls in the sunglass holder, it looks pretty cool. I can flip up the holder and it looks perfectly stock.

I'll post pics tomorrow, I have to take some.

palmz_boyz

I had the same problem and discovered that GOLD DYE or BLUE DYE CD ALWAYS work, stay away from the GREEN DYE CD.

adyskrilla

I installed an alpine 6-disk changer in the trunk and I can control both the changer and the dash cd player. You could buy an Acura changer, but an Alpine works and is a hell of lot cheaper.

ResidualFreedom

Here are the pics I promised....I did the install myself in about two hours the other day. Like I mentioned above, I hate the Sony Explode Line (Just personal feelings, think they're kind of cheezy for trying to enter the competition audio market) but it was a cheap easy fix for the damn burned CDs.

Damn nice listening to thoes old CD again ..

Tatewaki

Good and clean install. Glad to see you like it I am still drooling over how bright and blue this thing is at night. I must say I still miss the changer. But then again, I found a worthy replacement (and a big hit in wallet in doing so...)

makers

WARNING - if you don't want to understand (from a bit nerd/engineer perspective) what the cause of this is, please skip this reply. The info expressed here is the experience / knowledge / expertise of a degreed computer scientist / computer engineer with 20+ years of hardware experience, so take it for what it is worth and be forewarned - geek speak ahead. I posted another thread on this topic many moons ago on this very board that got some nice responses/reviews.

Burn speed may be important to some burners, but my experience has been that it is the BURNER ITSELF more than anything. Between work and home, I own/possess four different (brands & speeds & vintage) burners, and have used probably another half dozen more in the last five years at work, home, friend's, and/or customer sites.

The firmware/motor combination of your burner determines a great deal in regards to the low level spacing between the concentric tracks of binary pits/blanks on the CD-R. The simple issue with some of the more recent, faster (16X or better) burners (regardless of speed of burn) - in order to make some of the rated burn speeds, the firmware (read: chip) programming and stepper motor (spinning the disc) in combination determine how "tightly packed" the tracks are to each other circularly on the disc. The actual burn speed doesn't have much, if any, bearing on this spacing.

Simply put, tighter packing = harder to read for the older drives. Explanation ahead. . .

CD drives/players actually split the laser beam into three segments - one center beam/split for reading, and two angled offset beams/splits for alignment (keeping the center beam - what else? - centered on the pits). Some drives and/or players (especially older models, but some new ones too) have slightly wider side beam offset angles, hence making it more difficult for the player to align the center beam because there isn't as much of a non-pitted gutter between the tracks. The side beams are programmed to find/seek clean, non-pitted (burned) space to insure that the center beam is aligned properly, or else it keeps spinning the disc, moving the head in small steps in and out radially from the center, trying in vain to align before attempting to read the center beam. The result? The neverending spin, spin, spin, and finally bail out of the player on a "fast" CD-R.

Imagine the lanes on a highway. Without the painted lane/edge lines (clean gutters on the CD-R), you wouldn't truly "know" where the edge of the lane was/is (some drivers don't pay much attention to these anyway, but humor me here. . .). If the lines are so thin or your eyesight was so bad that you couldn't see them unless they were 10" or more wide, you aren't allowed to drive on that road. This is the equivalent of the programming that is built into all CD players (our HU's & changers included). Different players though, like different folks, have different eyesight. Our HU's (at least the older ones) are a bit more "nearsighted" than some others.

Does the media (CD-R brand, type, color, etc.) play a factor? Yes, but the burner is the real deciding factor here.

My best experiences with my '99 HU have been with either a cheap ($20 on eBay two years ago) old 4X max burner in a USB-cabled external housing, circa 2000-2001, and my "hey, is it a CD yet?" Sony 2X internal IDE drive (1999 - it was a very good year). Slow? You betcha' - nothin' like 40+ minutes to burn a CD-R. But after using gold, green, purple, & silver media colors, I can safely report that these two particular turtle burners have a 98%+ success rate (better than 50 CD-R's total) for me & my HU. The same media in my snazzy, butt kickin' 48X burner (at all available speeds) and my slightly older 16X burner have about a 10% success rate, at that, in my HU.

For the record, I have tried at least two different, "new" CDROM drives for a Dell Latitude D600 (new, heavy duty, but non-gaming) laptop, with identical results for CD's burned on my higher speed burners vs my lower speed ones, with the same results as those experienced by my '99 HU - the 95% for the slowers vs. about 10% for the faster ones, regardless of actual burn speed. Guess the D600 was sourced from Honda/Acura, too. . . :-)

Might not be a bad idea to surf the 'Bay and/or a local flea market/yard sale/computer store and check out the bargain bins for an older, low mileage burner. Seems to me that $10 or $20 would be worth a try to avoid the frustration (at least, to me) of burning yet another dozen or so CD (cold drink) discs/coasters.

TeknoKing

(<-- Masters in Computer Science)

Everything you said is very true. Im using Plextor CD-R (sometimes the old TDKveloCD), and I burn at 4x, I get pretty good results in the HU of my 2000TL.

I also noticed that today top brands of CD-Rs are not as good for our HU as the cheaper brands. I'm using the brand SmartBuy Black CD-R, cheap and great Sooner or later I'll just change my HU to a double bin mp3 enabled player. iPOD technology is not that great yet especially when it comes to browsing thru the folders.

peace.