Saturn not reading games, Laser tested ok

I have a Japanese model 2 Saturn here, with a JVC laser assembly, and it will not read games. The laser skips and clicks and will sometimes loads games, but will randomly boot me back to the system menu.

I tried the laser pickup in another Saturn and it reads games fine.

What could be causing this?

 

Could be lots of things - the first things I would check are the spindle height and the motors.

 

i'm not 100% but if the PSU wasn't outputting enough Voltage it could cause this issue. Possible bad Cap on the PSU Board , others will have to verify my theory

 

@AndehX guess you should try checking the voltage out of the PSU, and check that the board and laser assembly are receiving the correct voltage.

 

Yeah, that's also entirely possible, and I should have mentioned it. I typically start by swapping the PSU before I do anything else, so I guess I was operating from the assumption that it had already been checked. Especially if it's one of those boards with a TOPswitch IC on it, since they seem to suffer from a high failure rate but normally don't die completely, just go weak.

 

Ok, so I think I've narrowed it down.
I had installed a PicoPSU into it (since its a japanese unit) but I didn't realize that I had accidentally wired one of the 2 5v pins, to a 12v point on the Pico....
Anyway, long story short. I fed 12v into the laser PCB when it was expecting 5v. So im assuming i've fried it.
Im getting a replacement sent out from a guy in the US (Electronics Repair on Facebook)

Let this be a lesson to everyone. Check your voltages before you send them through your console

 

Thanks for the lesson, I haven't done something like this yet but I can totally see myself doing it by accident at some point.