I have ran into a new problem!
I have 10 of these units chained and stacked in a cabinet.
The firewire cables that came with them are very thick and lomg.
It is dificult to bundle them up and hide them.

WARNING!:

If you are tempted to replace them, listem to this.

I decided to repace the cables with shorter ones.
So, I bought 24" cables to use instead.
I noticed that the new one were also very thin.
They work OK as long as you don't chain them.
The wire inside are very thin, and can not handle much current.
I connected my changers, and the wires melted inside the
cables and shorted out the PATA to 1394 bridge boards in
4 of my units!

If you are tempted to use different cables and have more than one changer,
be sure they are of high quality.

Sony says to connect no more than 5 changers,
but I have been running with 10.
(until now)

This thread hasn't had much activity for awhile but I hope there are still folks out there reading  :)

I picked up a VPG-XL1B from a local on craigslist for a reasonable price since you can't get them anywhere anymore.

I did all my research and knew not to install drivers etc as I'm using Vista ultimate X64.  The unit came with the driver CD which actually said "For Vista 32bit".

I plugged the unit in and powered everything up and all worked fine.  I loaded a few DVD's and they cataloged and identified with no issues at all.  After testing it a bit, I decided to load about 50 DVD's into the unit so I could just let it go and index them all.  After about 40 the changer made a slightly different noise when loading them but it took them.  Media Center identified there were new changes and prompted to catalog them and I clicked yes and it started doing it's thing.   I heard the change load about 8 of the DVD's and then it tossed me an error that it failed and to click ok.

Then it all went downhill.  It prompted me again, and it got one more title in the list and errored again.

So I rebooted the PC and the PC would no longer boot fully.  It would get to the screen where you see "microsoft" and the rolling bar on a normal Vista bootup, but I would never get to the logon screen.  It would just go black and sit there.  I let it sit for 15 mins and finally manually rebooted.  No go.

The carosel rotates when I power it on, but if the changer is powered on and connected, I never get to the logon screen.  If I bootup with it powered off, and/or disconnected, I get to the Vista logon screen fine.  Then if I power up or plug in the changer, Vista locks up and stops responding.

I had an extra PC handy so I just did a quick load of Vista ultimate 32bit to see if it was the OS and no dice.  Same thing.  If the changer is plugged in it won't boot.  I've tried two different Vista PC's, changed cables, no go.  Vista gives the "doink" noise indicating something has been connected, but nothing from there.  If I open anything related to drives it hangs and if I close it, it kills my whole desktop unless I manually reboot the PC.

Ideas?  If a disc is jammed in the drive itself would it cause this behavior?  I'm going to disassemble it and do an alignment and make sure the drive is emply and then try again.   If anyone has any other ideas, I'm all ears.  I'm a bit disappointed because at first it was flawless and problem free...until I loaded 50 or so DVD's and started the catalog process.

Thanks!

stryguy:

3) Look in the upper left corner - you will see the stepping motor shaft (where the belt winds around) and what looks like two plastic standoffs (note these for later). You will also see a single screw with a washer and what looks like a lug above it, almost like an adjustment handle. Use the long phillips head to loosen this screw 1/2 to 1 turn, just enough to move that lug (later on, not now!). Go through the hole in the corner of the metal brace - you will get a straight on shot and get enough torque to loosen that screw (coated with red varnish to stop it from vibrating loose). If you try to loosen the screw going sideways, and that varnish is tough, you will strip the head off of the screw, and be unhappy.

Amenitek

I think I have found the design flaw with the VGP-XL1B.  The reason that it gets out of alignment again and again is related to the stepper motor creating heat that is transferred through the shaft and makes the plastic pres-fit gear expand.  Thus loosens the press-fit and spins.  I found this out after applying loctite. I had thought I solved the issue of alignment. 

I was working on solving my last mentioned issue of not being able to erase the changer memory of discs.  I was using the mange discs application in MCE to eject each disc (yes, I actually did this for 190 discs).  It would fail on each one and give an error that it couldn't eject.  I then clicked eject (yes a second time for each disc) and it would fail again but would also minus the disc count by one.  After 1.5 hours of clicking and waiting for the carousel to spin, the stepper motor was really hot.  It was completely spinning inside the gear.  Touching the shaft revealed that it's so hot I burned myself. 

I plan to fix by removing the stepper motor, drilling the gear and shaft and installing a roll-pin.  this can be done on the lower part of the gear where the belt never rides. The alternative is to buy or have a machinist make a metal gear.  Then, it could be tapped and a set screw installed. 

I'll post my results if anyone is interested.

Thanks for this info a dab of epoxy and I slid the pulley back on to the stepper motor shaft and fixed my $1500 niveus changer.  Thanks

Can anyone point me towards the link to the "changer diagnostic tool" or email it to me.  I can't find it on Sony's support site and I can't get the Sony tech support people to email it to me unless I pay their $24 support fee.

I took another appart a couple of theese units, and found that they used 2 different power supplys.

The older ones use ASTEC LPT42 (40 watt)

The newer ones use SKYNET SNP-9F40 / 850-904X (65 watt)

I found you some better prices!

 http://secure.transtronics.com/osc/product_info.php/cPath/20_21/products_id/31

http://cgi.ebay.com/Skynet-SNP-9041-Power-Supply-Open-Frame-850-904X_W0QQitemZ200409891151QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCA_UPS?hash=item2ea95c414f

http://www.kpsurplus.com/products/view/27714