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Slim PlayStation 2 optical drive swap trouble

I have a nice pink (slim) PS2 with a broken optical drive that I’m trying to fix. I have a replacement drive that has an identical code to the broken one and that visually looks identical except that one of the ribbon cables is longer. I put it in following the instructions from iFixit, but the new drive does not seem to spin up (though it does move the read head, it sound like).

I put the old drive back and try again, with the same result. This is surprising because the previous drive could read CDs (PS1 games) but not DVDs, so I fixed it worse than it was before.

Does anyone have suggestions for where to start troubleshooting? What could have possibly gone wrong to cause this?

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2 comments
  • Did you try both ribbon cables? One from the old drive, and one from the new one?

    Briefly looking online, a replacement ribbon cable (L shaped?) appears generic and covers many model numbers

    • Sort of; each device kept their own ribbon cable which meant I tried both, but not on the same device. I’ll look into that, thanks!