Hardware Wii optical drive

Fivemagics · Jan 13, 2011

Hi, lately a friend of mine brought me a Wii to repair. I'm a student in electronics repairs so I have a background.

So the problem with the drive is that it won't read any disks. Like on the system menu, when inserting a disk, the disk on disk channel doesn't even spin.

Now took apart the console, got to the disk drive and performed a few tests. I noticed the motor wouldn't spin at all, nor would the laser light up. The motor carrying the lens works tho. After trying a few disks, eventually it started running. The disk channel would detect games but when I tried loading them the Wii would crash. After testing a few games again, it eventually got back to not spinning/lighting up.

At first I thought it was the spindle motor, but I figured it possibly isn't spinning because of the laser not being able to read the disk(not lighting up).

So in your opinion/experiences, do you think an optical block swap is gonna work?

Rowan · Jan 13, 2011

instead of an optical drive why not banner bomb the wii and play game of an external hard drive?

Hielkenator · Jan 13, 2011

Rowan said:
instead of an optical drive why not banner bomb the wii and play game of an external hard drive?

Also best option in my book...

Or replace the lens.

http://www.consoleshop.com/product.php?productid=16992

bazamuffin · Jan 13, 2011

Rowan said:
instead of an optical drive why not banner bomb the wii and play game of an external hard drive?

'Tis the future!!

Fivemagics · Jan 13, 2011

Great idea, but I already thought of it. The Wii is in 4.3...

Also forgot to mention, the people who had the Wii had it running for a week consecutive without turning it off. When they got back home it wouldn't read disks.

George Dawes · Jan 13, 2011

Fivemagics said:
The Wii is in 4.3...

What difference does that make?

hunnymonster · Jan 13, 2011

George Dawes said:
Fivemagics said:

The Wii is in 4.3...

Click to expand...

What difference does that make?

Makes Bannerbomb impossible... you have to run a game-based exploit (ie. read an optical disc)

Hielkenator · Jan 13, 2011

hunnymonster said:
George Dawes said:

Fivemagics said:

The Wii is in 4.3...

Click to expand...

What difference does that make?

Click to expand...

Makes Bannerbomb impossible... you have to run a game-based exploit (ie. read an optical disc)

Replace the drive or buy new wii.

Fivemagics · Jan 13, 2011

Update guys, and great one.

Figured since I had the tools I might aswell wash some stuff in there including the lens. This operation wasn't successful.

I tried my luck turning the potentiometer counter-clockwise for like, 1/8 to 1/4 of a turn. The ticking noise the lens used to make disappeared, disks are detected, I can even go in game on Brawl(which I couldn't before). Which means I have now installed Homebrew channel, so the problem is basicly fixed.

The disk drive so far seems to be running perfectly fine, let's hope it stays like that. Otherwise, well at least it's gonna be possible to boot from a HDD(which was pretty much the goal, in the end).

Donkey Plonk · Jan 14, 2011

Sorry to say, but this will eventually probably die.
Turning the pot is gonna increase wear on it, I adjusted a pot on a gamecube before and eventually it was completely unusable.

A new laser is like £7 mate, just get one for em otherwise they'll be back in a few weeks. Then it'll be good for another few years.

TheWon · Jan 18, 2011

I wish I was capability to do what you did! I had to pay 112 dollars to Videogames911 to fix.

snap_0714 · Jan 20, 2011

how do i know if its the actual laser. i bought about 6 wiis and all have bad drives. luckily most are ver 3.0-3.5 so i can use the usb loader. but i want to know if i can fix the dvd drive. they do accept the disc. but they wont spin. i can hear some clicking but it wont even read the disc on the wii channel. how would i know if tis a bad motor or a bad laser?

Donkey Plonk · Jan 20, 2011

snap_0714 said:
how do i know if its the actual laser. i bought about 6 wiis and all have bad drives. luckily most are ver 3.0-3.5 so i can use the usb loader. but i want to know if i can fix the dvd drive. they do accept the disc. but they wont spin. i can hear some clicking but it wont even read the disc on the wii channel. how would i know if tis a bad motor or a bad laser?

You need to test it with a working drive really, easiest way. Swap out known working bits for potential non working, when it works again, you have your bit.

But anyway, not spinning at all sounds like could be motor. But what kind of disc? If you are just putting a standard dvd into a standard wii then yeah, it won't spin. Gotta be a wii game or GC game

snap_0714 · Jan 20, 2011

Donkey Plonk said:
snap_0714 said:

how do i know if its the actual laser. i bought about 6 wiis and all have bad drives. luckily most are ver 3.0-3.5 so i can use the usb loader. but i want to know if i can fix the dvd drive. they do accept the disc. but they wont spin. i can hear some clicking but it wont even read the disc on the wii channel. how would i know if tis a bad motor or a bad laser?

Click to expand...

You need to test it with a working drive really, easiest way. Swap out known working bits for potential non working, when it works again, you have your bit.

But anyway, not spinning at all sounds like could be motor. But what kind of disc? If you are just putting a standard dvd into a standard wii then yeah, it won't spin. Gotta be a wii game or GC game

im placing a wii game. wii sports. mario kart and other games. it wont spin. i here the lens moving. so i dont know if its the lens not sensing the disc thats why it wont spin or the motor itself. i do have another wii drive thats working. but i rather not disassemble that and break it as well. i need the drives to rip the games to a usb hdd. and i think these drives are the D2 drives that can play dvd and backup games thats why i want them to work. how do you know if the drives are the ones that can play backups? other than the serial of the wii?

Donkey Plonk · Jan 21, 2011

By taking it apart and looking at it.
Sorry but I'm a very hands on sort of guy, I don't see any point beating around the bush in these sorts of circumstances, the only way to know for sure is to test.
You shouldn't break the drive, they are very simple pieces of kit really. To test the motors though you will need to do some very minor soldering to disconnect/reconnect the motors.
Really is the only way to know. But you can start by just swapping over the laser, because that at least rules it out and you won't need to solder to do this, just a couple of screws.
Alternatively just buy a new drive off ebay complete if you don't think you can manage it

snap_0714 · Jan 21, 2011

Donkey Plonk said:
By taking it apart and looking at it.
Sorry but I'm a very hands on sort of guy, I don't see any point beating around the bush in these sorts of circumstances, the only way to know for sure is to test.
You shouldn't break the drive, they are very simple pieces of kit really. To test the motors though you will need to do some very minor soldering to disconnect/reconnect the motors.
Really is the only way to know. But you can start by just swapping over the laser, because that at least rules it out and you won't need to solder to do this, just a couple of screws.
Alternatively just buy a new drive off ebay complete if you don't think you can manage it

thanks ill try to swap the lasers first. another question regarding the motor. i checked and there are two motors. what exactly does the drive use to make the discs spin? i see a ribbon going to the disc center too. getting a new drive is almost like getting a used wii. so im looking at other options for repairing it.

Donkey Plonk · Jan 21, 2011

snap_0714 said:
Donkey Plonk said:

By taking it apart and looking at it.
Sorry but I'm a very hands on sort of guy, I don't see any point beating around the bush in these sorts of circumstances, the only way to know for sure is to test.
You shouldn't break the drive, they are very simple pieces of kit really. To test the motors though you will need to do some very minor soldering to disconnect/reconnect the motors.
Really is the only way to know. But you can start by just swapping over the laser, because that at least rules it out and you won't need to solder to do this, just a couple of screws.
Alternatively just buy a new drive off ebay complete if you don't think you can manage it

Click to expand...

thanks ill try to swap the lasers first. another question regarding the motor. i checked and there are two motors. what exactly does the drive use to make the discs spin? i see a ribbon going to the disc center too. getting a new drive is almost like getting a used wii. so im looking at other options for repairing it.

New drive is like £30-£40. That is not the price of a used wii, about half the price.

There are indeed two motors, one spins the disc, the other moves the laser.
As you say the laser is moving so that one should hopefully be ok. So it will either be the laser itself not reading or the spindle motor not spinning the disc.

The ribbon at the centre is for the spindle motor

snap_0714 · Jan 21, 2011

Donkey Plonk said:
snap_0714 said:

Donkey Plonk said:

By taking it apart and looking at it.
Sorry but I'm a very hands on sort of guy, I don't see any point beating around the bush in these sorts of circumstances, the only way to know for sure is to test.
You shouldn't break the drive, they are very simple pieces of kit really. To test the motors though you will need to do some very minor soldering to disconnect/reconnect the motors.
Really is the only way to know. But you can start by just swapping over the laser, because that at least rules it out and you won't need to solder to do this, just a couple of screws.
Alternatively just buy a new drive off ebay complete if you don't think you can manage it

Click to expand...

thanks ill try to swap the lasers first. another question regarding the motor. i checked and there are two motors. what exactly does the drive use to make the discs spin? i see a ribbon going to the disc center too. getting a new drive is almost like getting a used wii. so im looking at other options for repairing it.

Click to expand...

New drive is like £30-£40. That is not the price of a used wii, about half the price.

There are indeed two motors, one spins the disc, the other moves the laser.
As you say the laser is moving so that one should hopefully be ok. So it will either be the laser itself not reading or the spindle motor not spinning the disc.

The ribbon at the centre is for the spindle motor

a console only wii can be bought for about $50 here. but you wont know what dvd drive it has. a used dvd drive is about $40 here. so not much of a difference. so which one is the spindle motor? do you mean i have to replace the spindle motor itself or the long motor with 4 wires? or the other motor with 2 wires? so that makes it 3 motors then?

Donkey Plonk · Jan 21, 2011

There are indeed 3 motors but I had already ruled that 1 out as its the eject motor and you didn't say it wouldn't eject so that ones a definite working one.

The spindle on is the one right in the middle, the one that spins the disc. The long motor with 4 wires is the one that controls the laser.

And yeah good point about the console only, I was thinking of a box set as I recently bought one hence why thinking of that price, but yes a console only could be got for not much more than a drive.

Had a chance to swap that laser over yet? If it turns out to be that, try just giving the current one a clean with some iso and a q-tip

snap_0714 · Jan 21, 2011

Donkey Plonk said:
There are indeed 3 motors but I had already ruled that 1 out as its the eject motor and you didn't say it wouldn't eject so that ones a definite working one.

The spindle on is the one right in the middle, the one that spins the disc. The long motor with 4 wires is the one that controls the laser.

And yeah good point about the console only, I was thinking of a box set as I recently bought one hence why thinking of that price, but yes a console only could be got for not much more than a drive.

Had a chance to swap that laser over yet? If it turns out to be that, try just giving the current one a clean with some iso and a q-tip

im taking out the lasers from the consoles. i have about 6-8 non working drives. one of them lasers should work. ill try it out on my working drive. check the lasers then check the spindle motor. one more question. the parts are all the same for all drives right? the only thing different are the board at the bottom? so swapping them around wont do any harm?

Hardware Wii optical drive

Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

RESIDENT HATER OF POLITICAL POSTING WANKSTAINS

Member

Wanker

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Similar threads

Popular threads in this forum