Welcome to another episode of "APE has an obscure problem that is difficult to track down". A few months ago I killed a SegaCD 2 with a NES AC adapter. For anyone who doesn't know the NES AC adapter is less an adapter and more a deadly box that drops down the voltage of AC power to 9vac. DO NOT USE IT ON YOUR SEGACD OR GENESIS! I discovered today that I miswired a transistor bypass and the sucker actually boots up and attempts to read discs. The laser will glow even when the unit is off (I'm assuming this has to do with the transistor bypass) and when powered on it occasionally makes an attempt at spinning the disc. When it does spin the disc slips as it seems the spindle spins too fast too quickly, with an extra disc sat on top it spins better but not enough to actually boot a game or play music. Most of the time it doesn't actually spin at all. The laser will attempt to focus and appears to fire every time the lid sensor is shorted. It will move itself towards the hub when pushed to the outer edge without fail. The only thing I can think of is that the laser may have been damaged by AC power flowing through it (the laser did make a horrid noise with the motors as well as being lit constantly). It is a Samsung SOH-OT4 FWIW. What makes this problem odd to me is that I've had similar symptoms with a JVC X'EYE that didn't have any sort of unfortunate accidents.
Is this the one you sold the lid to me? If so the lid has a magnet in it to hold the disc on the spindle. If you need a new laser, liberty electronics sell a pin compatible one as a SOH90-T4N. This has a plastic body and requires the cog/gear to be popped off to fit.
It is and I'm pretty sure the laser is shot but I was hoping someone would tell me it wasn't. I don't always enjoy having the right answer.
You are wasting your time, by using the Nintendo ac adapter you effectively reverse biased the circuit. In my experience, it is the IC chips that die first, usually in bizarre ways, one time on an LED chaser kit I put in a 4017 ic backwards, the result after repair is that it would light the LEDs is the wrong pattern. Long story short, you probably have a blown driver circuit possibly a blown laser diode (unlikly but it may look right but have the functionality of an LED rather than a laser). Probably a cheap fix but diagnosing the bad component may not be possible.
