Sudden issue with Philips drive - 1.4 Xbox.

[TheSegaHolic]

Hi folks,

A friend pointed me in your direction, and I hope you can shed some light of this issue.

I picked up an immaculate Xbox today, boxed, sealed manual, still had the plastic over the eject and power buttons, not a mark on the case

I played some OutRun2 and Dead or Alive 3, no issues. I then decided to “stress test” and run a game for half an hour, and chose Halo 2, letting it sit in its promo/demo loop.

After around 35 mins, the game froze. I ejected the disc, returned to the dash, and reloaded the disc … nothing.

The green light around eject just flashes, but there’s no action from the drive other than 3 whirs then nothing.

Tonight I took the console apart, and it’s immaculate inside. No leaks, no dust, no bulging caps, not even a spec of dust on the fan … I doubt this console has seen much use, which is what makes this issue even harder to understand.

When I had the lid off the drive, I tried to load a game, OutRun2 … but the behaviour is the same for any disc.

The lens moves to the top of the track and back 3 times, and each time it returns to its “home” position next to the disc spindle, the spindle tries to turn and moves, if it’s lucky, a centimetre or two. It does this 3 times, then nothing.

I don’t get any disc read errors, because the disc doesn’t seem to spin up. The drive, like the rest of the system, is very clean but it just stopped working so suddenly.

Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated. I don’t want to return this to CEX for them to scrap it, especially given it’s condition, so I want to try and save it. If the drive is toast, as I suspect it may well be, what are my options in terms of modding without a working disc drive?

Thanks all.

Edit: I have uploaded a video of the drive in action, here:

 

Edited November 3, 2021 by TheSegaHolic

[TheSegaHolic]

Ok, so an update … after reassembling the console I decided to give it a try and, to my amazement, it worked again …

I don’t know if perhaps the upper portion of the disc spindle held inside the top half of the drive shell had seized up but the action of opening it up to look and reassembling it again seems to have worked.

I’m going to clean the worm gear and rails and apply a little lithium grease as it looks like perhaps it’s simply dried out after close to two decades in storage and barely being used.

I did notice when playing a little OutRun2 that the music skipped and stuttered in places, so I don’t think I’m out of the woods yet by any means, but it’s a damn sight more positive than it was a couple hours ago!

[KaosEngineer]

16 hours ago, TheSegaHolic said:

Hi folks,

A friend pointed me in your direction, and I hope you can shed some light of this issue.

I picked up an immaculate Xbox today, boxed, sealed manual, still had the plastic over the eject and power buttons, not a mark on the case

I played some OutRun2 and Dead or Alive 3, no issues. I then decided to “stress test” and run a game for half an hour, and chose Halo 2, letting it sit in its promo/demo loop.

After around 35 mins, the game froze. I ejected the disc, returned to the dash, and reloaded the disc … nothing.

The green light around eject just flashes, but there’s no action from the drive other than 3 whirs then nothing.

Tonight I took the console apart, and it’s immaculate inside. No leaks, no dust, no bulging caps, not even a spec of dust on the fan … I doubt this console has seen much use, which is what makes this issue even harder to understand.

When I had the lid off the drive, I tried to load a game, OutRun2 … but the behaviour is the same for any disc.

The lens moves to the top of the track and back 3 times, and each time it returns to its “home” position next to the disc spindle, the spindle tries to turn and moves, if it’s lucky, a centimetre or two. It does this 3 times, then nothing.

I don’t get any disc read errors, because the disc doesn’t seem to spin up. The drive, like the rest of the system, is very clean but it just stopped working so suddenly.

Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated. I don’t want to return this to CEX for them to scrap it, especially given it’s condition, so I want to try and save it. If the drive is toast, as I suspect it may well be, what are my options in terms of modding without a working disc drive?

Thanks all.

Edit: I have uploaded a video of the drive in action, here:

 

 

 

The disc will not spin without the clamp that's encapsulated in the top of the DVD drive case which holds it tight against the spindle.

[KaosEngineer]

3 hours ago, TheSegaHolic said:

Ok, so an update … after reassembling the console I decided to give it a try and, to my amazement, it worked again …

I don’t know if perhaps the upper portion of the disc spindle held inside the top half of the drive shell had seized up but the action of opening it up to look and reassembling it again seems to have worked.

I’m going to clean the worm gear and rails and apply a little lithium grease as it looks like perhaps it’s simply dried out after close to two decades in storage and barely being used.

I did notice when playing a little OutRun2 that the music skipped and stuttered in places, so I don’t think I’m out of the woods yet by any means, but it’s a damn sight more positive than it was a couple hours ago!

The 20 year old hard drive may be dyiing.  Xbox game's cache data to the hard drive to play them.

[TheSegaHolic]

36 minutes ago, KaosEngineer said:

The disc will not spin without the clamp that's encapsulated in the top of the DVD drive case holding it to the spindle.

Right, ok.

The discs weren’t spinning prior to taking it apart, and the same noise when the tray was closed/disc was inserts match what you see in the video.

Perhaps something slipped out of alignment and the opening and reassembling has helped? Or perhaps an IDE or power cable had come a little loose and me unhooking them and rehooking them back up has done something?

I mean I’m delighted its working now, but I don’t plan to use it often. At least now I can use the Splinter Cell soft mod and get a bigger hard drive in there to store my discs on.

 

[TheSegaHolic]

Here’s another interesting “quirk”.

Some discs, when loading, make a loud metallic vibrating noise when spinning. I took the top off the console and tried again, vibrating is gone.

If I apply a tiny bit of pressure with my finger to the circle on top of the DVD drive casing, I can replicate the vibrating noise.

Is it a case of me screwing the DVD drive chassis back together too tightly? Putting the lid back on the console too tightly so it’s putting pressure on the top of the DVD drive … but then, why does it only do it on certain games? 

[jeffl]

If you have plans to TSOP, you should soft mod before that drive gives up the ghost.