Same problem here. friend of a friend handed me it, and said here see if you can make this paperweaght work.
So far, little tinkering last night, didn't see any solder connection issues(I did just read some stuff about the large solder blobs, have not done anything there yet)
plays CDs fine, skips tracks, display works as does eject etc... I do get a little noise when it turns on and when the ? is displayed
when playing I get some background noise and static from the audio output with the stereo turned up. no music, just background static, and 'digital' noise when changing tracks etc. SO it appears the preamp is working...