I tore apart an old nonfunctioning cd player today to get at the motors. One of them have normal red and black wire, but the other one had orange and gray. Both motors' wires were connected to a little white thing which I'm thinking is just used to connect to the circuit board, but I'm not sure. I am planning on just cutting them off from the white thing, but just to make sure, are the orange and gray wires just used to set them apart from the other motor's wires, or is there something special going on?

 

Off the top of my head, I am not sure what the orange and grey wires would be.

Grey may be neutral since it is a motor.

Then again, is this a stepper motor?

 

Then again, is this a stepper motor?

I was goind to suggest that you coul be facing a stepper motor too. If it's a stepper it's probably a bipolar stepper, and each winding has it's own pair or wires.

If you have a digital camera, could you post a picture of the motor, wires and the rest of your CD player's internals?

 

If it's the main motor, it's not a stepper. The jerkiness of the action would not allow operation, plus it would not spin fast enough. The motor has to change speed as the head progreses across the surface. The two wires may be part of the speed sensing.

At a guess, the white thing is a connector.

 

Perhaps a photograph would be of help here?

Dave