Uniti Serve: CD won't eject

Hi Chris

If you have a one of the latest versions of the unitiserve there should be a small hole on the front if so insert a paper clip in this hole and your CD should eject

No hole.  

You're in a bit of a hole then Chris by the looks of it...

Then turn unitiserve off and then back on again. see if that works

Power cycled the unit, no effect. 

Turn the unitiserve into  CD Player mode select last track. let it play till the end and see if it ejects

Tried that, but the Uniti does not see the CD, so switching into play mode has no effect. 

Isn't there a way to hold a finger over the logo to eject?  Can't seem to remember how long I hold my finger there.  

A force-eject button in the software would sure be helpful.

Yes you can hold a finger on the logo to eject, I take it you have tried that also with no effect. Let me have a think. I'll be back.

I had the same problem (although my Serve even had the little eject hole).  It had to go back to the distributor for servicing - apparently a pooched cd mechanism.  It's not good to hear that this may be occurring more often.

Right ..... Turn off the unit and when you turn unit back on place finger on naim logo and see if that ejects disc...

Still no luck.  

Oh Dear looks like you will have to have a word with your dealer. Good luck.

Another power cycle finally ejected the disc.   Annoying.  

There should be a simple software fix for this problem.  

No such thing. Needs a hard eject mechanism. I don't have a 'serve, but this stuff has driven me crazy on other devices in the past.

They can't send a signal to the mech to eject?   

If it overrides software, I'd call that a "firmware" fix. We might be playing with semantics here. The closer the instruction is to the physical action, the more reliable it should be. What I was alluding to was the complexity of a software command that has to get the attention of the processor and reliably interject into the lines of code controlling whatever the player is so unsuccessfully trying do do with the CD in question.

Think about trying to close a program that is stalled/busy. Sometimes you just have to switch it off. The on/off button on your PC is firmware in that whilst it isn't a physical isolator anymore, you can override all software including most of the OS by holding it down. A hardware fix is to pull the plug (and battery). "There, nasty disobedient PC; that's got your attention at long last, hasn't it?"

FYI -below is Richard Dane's reply to the same question I asked. Power down on my uServe is by touching the front logo for 5secs. To restart switch rear power switch off, then on again. Paperclip hole is tiny - just under cd slot slightly right of centre.

"If the Unit fails to rip a disc and it sticks in the drive:

If the disc remains in the drive for a long period of time (on average 10 minutes should be sufficient to rip 80 minute audio discs), then it is possible that the disc used has a defect – either physical damage, a mastering issue or has an aggressive copy protection scheme built in.

Some possible reasons:

Copy Protection: Most manufacturers’ CD/DVD drives have some capability to work around these deliberate errors on the disc, but there is a limit to what the drives can do. If you are finding only certain discs have this issue and the majority are fine, it is best that the affected disc should not be used in the player. The problem here is most discs do not display copy protection labels, so it is hard to know which may be affected.

Physical damage: The error correction routines used in drives have three main levels of algorithm. Most discs will have dust on them and the error correction will generally cope well with this. If fingerprints are on the data surface, this will usually mean the error correction has to work harder to obtain the original data. In the case of scratches the drive will try as much as possible to correct for this, but potentially can end up muting the audio briefly or in our case, telling the Naim software to skip the “damaged” track altogether. In this case, the ripping engine moves to the next tracks and finally ejects the disc when it has finished ripping. If a particular disc is causing issue, but the majority of rips are fine, it is suggested this disc should not be used in the player.

Disc eccentricity and vibration: CD Audio discs used to be made to a “red book” standard; it is fairly common knowledge that this is no longer the case. The disc itself can be made eccentrically, causing the unit to vibrate on ripping or even jam in the drive.

If damage to the disc is so bad that the drive cannot cope with this, the disc should be ejected eventually, but this is down to how bad the disc has been damaged or manufactured.

This has in some cases, been seen as the unit retaining the disc for long periods of time. If a particular disc is causing issue in this way, the disc should not be used in the player. In this case power the unit down correctly from the front panel and the disc should eject on the next power up. If the disc still does not eject, then try using the mechanical front panel ejection-hole method, by repeatedly inserting a paper-clip in to the hole (UnitiServe) or the eject lever behind the door flap on
other variants - with the unit switched off, until the disc is visible."

I found if you hold your finger on the logo twice it ejects the disc.