SOLVED Repairing NR reader GameCube

They are encrypted so I would need to extract the encryption key from the whatchamacallit thingamajigg.

 

I did not know that so even though the drives are hot swappable they wont work in another tool

 

This was a DECR-1400A and they don't have hot-swappable HDDs. Coincidentally I also have a DECR-1000A (the swappable type, a large behemoth of a console) that arrived seemingly in good condition but that just won't boot up. No idea if those discs have anything on them though. As far as I know all PS3s are locked to their respective system. *might* be different with the swappable drives - at least the BDEmu drive.

 

where are you located I maybe able to help

 

Norway

 

Yeah, the lense is moving around and stuff

 

So I tweaked the pot. I still couldn’t get it to read the disc. There appears to be an optical issue. I’m going to have to resort to a transplant from a working gamecube. I will keep you posted.

 

Bad news. I’ve replaced the lense and still can’t get it to read a disc. At the moment it won’t spin any discs. Not sure what else could be wrong with it.

Any suggestions? I’m thinking it might be time to wrap this up

 

Put the nr reader pcb onto a working retail drive.

So that will sort the switch and any other drive issues. But still may need a pot tweak

 

I’m a little bit confused. Do you mean the motherboard or the board in the disc reader

 

One possiblity is that the seller was less than honest or didn’t know what he was doing, maybe switched the logic board from a retail?
Should be easy to test that and rule it out

 

That thought crossed my mind. I don’t have any pal gamecube games but I’m probably going to pick up a cheap one just to make sure. I already tested retail ntsc North America and Japan

 

The logic board in the drive. Its the only difference between retail and nr reader, hence the need to swap it over if you transplant a whole drive.

 

Hence my concern given the circumstances of this unit.

 

I have just had a pm conversation with a user. We have a theory that the disc I have may actually be a from a non-pal region.

He tested by putting a North American ntsc disc in his nr reader in Japan mode and he is getting the same error message I am. He also put a retail disc in and it said no disc, just like mine.

Interestingly enough, Balder’s Gate (the nr disc I have) was released in North America and then in Europe later, which makes it seem like it would be weird for very many PAL prototypes (if any) to even exist. So the next step is to test that disc in an ntsc nr reader.

Basically, I may have just fixed it and not known it because I was testing it with the wrong disc.

Also would just like to say thank you to everyone! You’ve all been a lot of help, and I appreciate it a lot

 

All Baldurs Gate builds are NTSC by default, here's a PAL build, marked PAL. Hope this helps.

 

Made a quick video about my experience fixing the NR reader. I hope it's not too terrible... just haven't seen any other pictures or videos of someone tearing apart an NR reader.