And of course, to enjoy the music. I use them as CD players. My old PIONEER CD player is getting old (yep, bought in 1989!) and can’t handle well the new generations of CD. Both of the “dumped” VCD players have a 3-CD loading dock.
It turned out after some time they started malfunctioning. I used an external CD cleaning disk, without success. My staff told me: “old”, just throw it, as giving it for repair would be half the price of buying a new one. Now, if this is not the ultimate stupid consumer excess situation we live in. As an engineer I could not accept to throw such nice pieces of electronic craftsmanship. Just open them to see the wonders of electronics.
So, the Philips VCD was sitting for two months in the office as my driver did not figure out when and where to throw it out.
Then my second VCD player (Changhong – 3 Disc Video-CD Player VD3000) started to die too. I promptly recovered the Philips and decided to give it a try. Normally I won’t do it because those players are real tricky to mess with. I dismounted the carousel (that was a challenge… to put it back). Checked it all, cleaned the laser eye with a cotton and alcohol. Surprise: all OK. Verdict: Beijing pollution plus deposit of the humidifiers. The CD lens cleaners are not up to that. Now the Philips is connected to the Pioneer installation (in my office) and works like new.

So, next came the Changhong, same procedure, same success. Plays ago in my library.
Again, two pieces of nice equipment less to pollute the environment after being cannibalized. And I am enjoying my CDs again.