Since you've cleaned the lens I suggest checking the laser sled for congealed or dried out lubricant. That can easily be cleaned and regreased. A sixteen year old player is pretty ancient. I wouldn't put alot of money into repair. It was a good player in it's day but many $200 current players will outperform it.
Why does my Rotel cd player skip?
I have an older Rotel RCD-865bx player (around 1992) which is starting to skip on almost all my cd's. Other times it will play cd's without skips but this is getting more infrequent, most times it just skips. It doesn't skip from track to track, the skips are like momentary pauses in the music. Does anyone know what might be causing this problem? Can this problem be corrected by me (I'm not a electronic repairman)? I've cleaned the lens without any improvement. Thanks