Patent ID: 8111594

Claim:
An optical disk drive formed by a connection between a pickup and a drive unit, each of which is produced individually, by a connector, wherein the pickup includes an aberration correction liquid crystal element, a drive use circuit driving the aberration correction liquid crystal element, and a photo acceptance unit receiving a light beam from an optical disk and outputting a detection signal to said drive unit through the connector, wherein the drive unit includes a control use circuit, a disk motor of the optical disk, and an aberration correction data operation unit which calculates aberration correction data by a control of the control use circuit, said drive use circuit of the pickup includes an astigmatic data storage which stores an astigmatic data of a static astigmatism peculiarly provided in an optical system in said pickup and measured in manufacturing of said pickup, wherein, after connecting said pickup and said drive unit with the connector, the drive use circuit of the pickup forwards the astigmatic data of a static astigmatism stored in the astigmatic data storage to the drive unit through the connector, said control use circuit of the drive unit calculates, based on said detection signal input through the connector, a detected correction data for correcting a dynamic aberration detected by said pickup, said aberration correction data operation unit of the drive unit receives said detected correction data and the astigmatic data forwarded through the connector and calculates an aberration correction data based on said detected correction data for correcting the dynamic aberration and said astigmatic data for correcting said static astigmatism read out from said drive use circuit, and transmits thus calculated aberration correction data to said drive use circuit through the connector, wherein the aberration correction data corrects the dynamic aberration and the static astigmatism, and the drive use circuit of said pickup drives said aberration correction liquid crystal element based on said aberration correction data returned from the control use circuit of the drive unit through the connector, and corrects the static aberration and the dynamic aberration simultaneously.