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Philips CDI 602 Troubleshooting Guide

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Philips CDI 602 (Philips brochure photograph)
CDI 602 front panel (Philips brochure): caddy slot at the left, 3.5-inch floppy drive in the centre, infra-red window at the right.

No service manual for the Philips CDI 602 has been found, so there are no published voltages, test points or error codes for its board.[1][2] The published sources give the front-panel indicators, the start-up sequence, and the steps the player shell follows when it loads an application from floppy. The parts it shares with the Philips CDI 601 are covered in more detail on the Philips CDI 601 Troubleshooting Guide. Routine care is on Philips CDI 602 General Maintenance.

First checks

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First checks
Symptom Check Source
Before switching on The 110/220 V selector (rear panel item 14) matches the mains supply Brochure
Remote control ignored The sensor LED flashes regularly while infra-red commands are being received; if it stays dark, the commands are not reaching the player Brochure
Disc not read The Reading Disc LED lights when a CD-i disc is loaded and flashes while it is read; see disc faults Brochure
"Load" does nothing, or gives up after a delay See floppy faults 6XX technical documentation
Pointing device on Port 2 not working It must be connected before the player is switched on 6XX technical documentation
Settings and clock lost SmartWatch NVRAM batteries; see the maintenance page Retrostuff

[3][4][5][6]

Floppy faults

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At start-up the config program tests for the floppy drive by provoking a controlled bus error: if the test program exits with a bus error, the player decides there is no drive. Only when a drive is found does it add the floppy formats to the configuration file in NVRAM.[4]

When "load" is selected in the settings menu of the player shell, the shell works through these steps and abandons the load at the first one that fails:[5]

  1. It tries every floppy format in the configuration file until one can read the inserted disc. If none matches, the load is cancelled after a time-out.
  2. It reads the disc's volume name and sets the command and data directories to the root of the floppy. If it cannot, the load is cancelled.
  3. It looks in the root directory for a file with exactly the same name as the volume label and loads it. If something goes wrong, the load is aborted.
  4. If the file name starts with "cdi_", it tries to switch the directories to the CD-i disc's root, so the program behaves as if it had been loaded from the CD-i disc; if that fails, it stays on the floppy.
  5. It starts the first module in the file. A failure at this point resets the player.

A time-out at the first step means that no known format could read the disc, which is also what happens if the drive was not detected at start-up. An abort at the third step means that the file named after the volume label was missing or failed to load. Philips's example tool for running a batch file from floppy needed the volume name "exebat", a file called exebat in the root, and a batch file called "startup", and worked only with the /d0 format.[5]

The floppy interface supports standard 3.5-inch double-density (1.0 MB) and quad-density (2.0 MB) drives, 80 tracks per side at 300 rpm, through a DP8473 controller that needs no adjustment.[7]

Start-up and the terminal

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If the player shell or service shell cannot be started, an error message is printed to a terminal on Port 3 (rear panel item 21, the default terminal port) at 9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, and the system crashes.[8][5][3] The player detects a terminal on Port 3 through its CTS line, pin 8.[4][9] The full start-up sequence, including the serial download routine, is on the CDI 601 troubleshooting guide.

Disc faults

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The 602 loads discs in a caddy into a CDM 9 mechanism.[10][11] The World of CD-i, a CD-i community site, finds that a disc that will not spin while the lens still moves is most often a turntable that has slipped down its shaft, which can be eased up by about 1 mm with a thin blade, and that the mechanisms it replaced all had damaged flat cables, none a dead motor.[11]

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References

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  1. ↑ The New International CD-i Association, "CD-i Service Manuals" (retrieved 2026-10-21): no manual for the CDI 602.
  2. ↑ Retrostuff, "Modifications for Philips CD-i Players" (retrieved 2026-10-20), section "JNMS, Maxi MMC and Mini MMC (prof.)".
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Philips Interactive Media Systems, CDI 602 Professional CD-I System, brochure, p. 5: front panel key (1 Reading Disc LED; 6 sensor LED, "flashes regularly when infra-red commands are being received"); rear panel key (14 mains voltage selector, 21 Port 3 default terminal). Hosted as File:Philips CDI 602 Brochure.pdf.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Philips Interactive Media Systems, CDI6XX Technical Manual (Technical Documentation for CDI 605 Users), 22 June 1992, chapter 3, Configuration Status Descriptor, section 4: floppy detection by a controlled bus error (the chkflop program); terminal detection through the CTS line of port 3; port 2 identified only at start-up. Hosted as File:Philips CDI 6XX Technical Documentation (1992).pdf.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Philips, CDI6XX Technical Manual, chapter 6, Load application and system: terminal at 9600 baud, 8 bits per character, no parity; section 4, Load floppy application, with the exebat example. Hosted as File:Philips CDI 6XX Technical Documentation (1992).pdf.
  6. ↑ Retrostuff, "NVRAM+RTC Solutions for Philips CD-i Players", 2021, updated 2025 (retrieved 2026-10-20), section "8 KB (SmartWatch)".
  7. ↑ Philips, CDI6XX Technical Manual, chapter 10, Floppy specification, section 3. Hosted as File:Philips CDI 6XX Technical Documentation (1992).pdf.
  8. ↑ Philips, CDI6XX Technical Manual, chapter 5, Sysgo. Hosted as File:Philips CDI 6XX Technical Documentation (1992).pdf.
  9. ↑ Philips, CDI6XX Technical Manual, chapter 8, Serial Port Specification: ports 3 and 4 pinning, CTS on pin 8. Hosted as File:Philips CDI 6XX Technical Documentation (1992).pdf.
  10. ↑ The New International CD-i Association, "Comparison table of all Philips professional and authoring CD-i players" (retrieved 2026-10-21): CDI 602/00, caddy, CDM 9.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 The World of CD-i, "Chronicle #32: CD-i player CDM substituition", 30 October 2020 (retrieved 2026-10-21).


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