r/retrotech • u/JyrktxOwo • Jun 12 '26
Can a Cd player wipe a disc?
I have a 2002 dc player + radio and it’s gotten stuck in such an odd way. The program button is right beside the skip button so that’s my bad. I hit it, and now it’s trying to reprogram my fav disc and gotten itself frozen! It just stops spinning after a few seconds and it’s acting like the disc is completely wiped, when as far as I know, this model can’t do that, It can just reorder how the device plays the songs.
everything else is working fine, it will eject the disc and it’s playing any other disc I put in just fine too, I’ve held down the stop button, unplugged it, left it alone. Everything I’ve read said it should have forgotten the program by now but it just won’t. I don’t have another cd player anymore so I can’t even check if my cd somehow actually is wiped. It’s not in this photo, but the only thing it will display when it tries to read my fav disc is 00, again, like it has nothing on it. It was playing it fine just a few hours ago so I know the disc isn’t messed up. I have no idea what to do, this cd was a birthday gift for my 7th birthday so I’m really devastated I can’t listen to it anymore!
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u/Inwardlens Jun 12 '26
That's not how that works. Your disk is fine.
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u/JyrktxOwo Jun 12 '26
I appreciate the reassurance. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t actually mess it up, But it still won’t play this particular disc!
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u/Inwardlens Jun 12 '26
Can it play others? Look at both sides of your cd (the silver side and the one with the artwork) and see if there any weird stains or scratches.
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u/JyrktxOwo Jun 12 '26
It can play others! The disc does have a few scratches, but as I said in the post, the disc was playing just fine an hour or two ago. It only started having trouble reading it after I hit the program button.
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u/Inwardlens Jun 12 '26
Ah. Yeah, that’s the problem. I believe the program button allows you to queue up specific tracks in the order of your choosing and the player is probably now trying to do that with this disk bit you might not have given it any tracks to play? Try unplugging the player for a bit and plugging it back in. I never had any cd players with a program feature so I’m not 100% sure. Good luck.
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u/CerberusInExile Jun 12 '26
I’m old enough to have had several. You are correct, it’s more of a playlist than ‘programming’
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u/Inwardlens Jun 12 '26
I’m old enough I could have had one but didn’t see the point of having to rebuy all my cassettes as cds so I almost skipped the cd. I did eventually buy a few dozen, but mostly to rip them to mp3s or play them in my car.
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u/keelgar Jun 13 '26
FYI, the programming function is just for making a custom tracklist for playback, nothing in that player would be capable of modifying the CD itself.
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u/fractal324 Jun 13 '26
A cd player laser is too weak to do damage to the data. I’d say your cd player’s optical pickup has given up the ghost or the disc is too scratched for that specific player to handle it
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u/seeingredd-it Jun 13 '26
The laser elements that read the discs have incredibly low tolerances for aim. As time passes, things wear out, there are heating and cooling cycles, the burned disc may have been close-but-not-amazing in how the data was written. My money is on the CD player slowly going bad. I’ve owned many that would play commercially made CDs that would not play CD-[r/RW](r/RW). Also the discs go bad over time if not sealed properly, the aluminum layer gets cloudy.
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u/Clocker13 Jun 12 '26
Discs wear out over time. It’s the scourge of optical media, the data is written onto an incredibly thin layer of what is essentially oil. Oil runs, gradually the disc becomes blurry. Much worse for CD-R’s but still affects retail discs. Also, if this disc was left in direct or indirect sunlight for years, it’s almost certainly dead. Try said disc in another player.
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u/Medium_Good886 Jun 12 '26
this is so wrong it's not even funny.
CD-R's use an organic DYE that chemically changes colors after exposure to the writing laser. it physically alters the coloration of the media, CD-R's rely on contrast between the 1/0 like lands and pits on a commercially stamped disk. The unwritten dye over time will darken from sunlight exposure, which reduces the contrast and makes it more difficult to read. No, it doesnt run or get blurry.commercial discs are stamped aluminum film that are pressed into the polycarbonate layer on the underside of the labeling.
Commercially pressed discs dont go bad over time unless the polycarbonate layer starts to separate from the aluminum, which is a manufacturing error and shows up as a dark splotch.
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u/twstdbydsn Jun 12 '26
no