Patent ID: 8406100

Claim:
An optical disc device using an optical disc as a recording medium to record and reproduce an information signal by irradiating a laser light onto the recording medium, the device comprising: an optical pickup including a laser light source generating the laser light, an object lens which collects the laser light generated by the laser light source and through which the laser light is irradiated onto the optical disc, and a tracking actuator for tuning a relative radial position of the object lens relative to the optical disc, the optical pickup recording an information signal onto a recording track of the optical disc or reproducing an information signal recorded on the optical disc; a tracking servo control section for controlling a relative radial position of the object lens relative to the optical disc by driving the tracking actuator based on position information about a relative radial position of the object lens relative to the optical disc; and an overall control section for controlling operations of the optical disc device, the tracking servo control section including a first operation mode for setting a driving power supplied to the tracking actuator to generally zero, a second operation mode for supplying a predetermined driving power to the tracking actuator in response to a predetermined input potential supplied to the tracking servo control section based on a control from the overall control section, and a third operation mode for supplying a driving power to the tracking actuator based on information about a relative radial position of the object lens relative to the optical disc, the information being supplied from the overall control section to the tracking servo control section, the overall control section, when the optical disc is installed to the optical disc device, setting the tracking servo control section to the first operation mode to acquire information about a relative radial position of the object lens relative to the optical disc, setting the tracking servo control section to the second operation mode in which a driving power changing an input potential supplied to the tracking servo control section by a predetermined amount by which the object lens moves in both radial directions of the optical disc is set to be supplied to the tracking actuator to acquire relationship between the input potential and information about a relative radial direction of the object lens relative to the optical disc, and shifting the input potential supplied to the tracking servo control section based on the information about the relative radial position in the first operation mode and the relationship in the second mode to set the tracking servo control section to the third operation mode in which a tracking servo control for the optical disc device is performed.