david@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (David E. Smyth) (02/27/90)
Does anybody have suggestions on how to get scratches out of the surface of CDs? For years, I did not worry about handling them, but now I've got a couple which no longer play (they skip back to the beginning of songs, or some amount backwards). Sometimes my kids get stuff on them when they are sliding around the floor of the car (you know, they get car sick or drop an ice cream cone). I've always just used whatever was at hand (a beer, or spit, or even soapy water if I'm at home). But these scratches, I dunno. Maybe rubbing compund or polishing compound. I'd hate to buy one of those "diskwasher" machines because I am so certain that they would be like those inane rubber thingies that stupid people put on their CDs: you know: some magic fluid is required which makes ones more like ones, and zeros more like zeros. I'm not talking about that "Oh my GAWD, I my ones aren't the brightest ones! The chewing gum on the disc has made the sound stage gooey" bullshit. I'm talking about honest to God scraches in the surface that really screw up the error correction logic enough that it can't fix the bytes.