Sanyo/Goldstar 3DO cd drive went from perfect to nonworking overnight

This is in regard to a Sanyo 3DO (although the Goldstar apparently has the same cd drive).

The drive worked perfectly, the tray even opened and closed properly with the press of the open button, and all game discs were read perfectly. I shipped it to a buyer (well packed in bubble wrap and peanuts), and as soon as he received it, he said it didn't work. He sent it back. He is correct, it doesn't work. The system and the box I shipped in are still in very good shape, so it is unlikely the box was stepped on or anything like that. It is the same system I sent to him (no unscrupulous swap going on)

Anyway, here are the current symptoms.

1) The open/close button does nothing
2) If the tray is completely open and I power on the system, the motor will draw it in about 1/3 of the way, but no farther.
3) If the tray is completely closed when I power on the system, regardless of whether I have a CD in it, about 80% of the time, the spindle will spin and the laser will slide all the way back to the top (farthest position from spindle) and then start knocking up and down repeatedly and making a racket as it hits plastic against plastic - it sounds like a woodpecker. The other 20% of the time, the spindle will spin and the laser will be quiet, but games will not start up and it doesn't appear like the laser is reading the disc.

I noticed that the worm gear on the motor was not meshing correctly with the gear assembly that pushes and pulls the drive out of the system. I was able to fix that gear meshing issue and that changed the problems from the cd drive being completly unresponsive (no opening, no closing, no spinning discs or moving of the laser) to the symptoms described above.

I've already tried reseating the internal ribbon cable that goes out when the tray opens/closes, to no effect.


Prior to shipping, there were no signs the laser was dying or gradually losing its ability to read discs. There is clearly an issue with the CD drive, but I don't know if its the ribbon cable or not at this point. The good news if I want to sink even more money into this, is that I could swap the drive with a goldstar... but that's a little bit low on my list of priorities atm. Any ideas for what could be the matter with this drive?

 

It probably got knocked while shipping.
Sounds like one of the plastic tooths broke on the cd drive machanism. It tries to move the laser in the correct position to hits a point where one of the tooth are missing and keeps repeating it.

 

Can you show me a picture of what you mean by plastic tooth? (doesn't have to be on a 3do). I'm not really visualizing what you suggest as I don't recall any plastic teeth or small breakable grooves that the laser sled moves on

 

Yeah, I am a software guy, don't know the correct wordings for hardware bits and pieces

I think it's named gear in English. Which is something you alreay mentioned in your post that I didn't read in full.. so you can ignore my post.

 

Ah now I get it I'll check out the gears that are part of the assembly for the drive motor...