DreamX 108 dvd player failure

[trooper11]

I hope this is the right place to ask this, but I am having an issue with my dvd player.

It started with not being able to read discs, now it wont turn on correctly at all. it seems to hang before it can load. so i decided to pop the lid and take a look. i notice that whenever the player is turne don, the dvd drive spins up sometimes, and sometimes wont move at all. if a disc is in it, it makes this horrible scracthing noise, seems liek its trying to spin but keeps fialing to.

i have a feeling the drive may be the only fault here, which leads me to my question.


if it is indeed the dvd drive, might i be able to replace it? would i need the exact model the dreamx uses, or could i use most any dvd rom drive? the front bezel i dont care about, i can mod that if needed. but the connections all look standard, ide cable, 4 pin power.

the drive in it now is listed as fuss audio model DV9929B. thanks for any help with this

[wulf109]

Thr Fuss is an IDE computer style drive. Practically any DVD-ROM drive from a computer should work. Take the DVD-ROM out yuor computer,hook it up twmporarily and see if that fixes the problem.

[trooper11]

well i took out my lite on dvd rom drive and hooked it up tot he ide and power, but when i switched it on there was nothing. the drive light didnt come on, no sounds of spinning up, and the led display on the dvd player showed nothing, just the power light.

could it be that i need to flash some sort of firmware to the lite on drive to get it to work? or could the fuss audio dvd drive have somehting special built into it.

oh also, i ntoiced the fuss drive ahd no jumper set, so i removed the jumper form the back of the lite on drive before installing it

[junkmalle]

i ntoiced the fuss drive ahd no jumper set, so i removed the jumper form the back of the lite on drive before installing it

That could be the problem. You need to make sure the new drive is set up as the same as the old one. There are three possible device settings: master, slave, cable select. There is no consistency among manufactures on what jumper settings mean what. You might see markings on the drives indicating the settings.

[wulf109]

Any DVD-ROM used in a DVD player must be jumpered as the master in order to boot up in the DVD player. I forgot that most computer's sold today use cable select to make system assembly easier.
Jumper the drive as the master and try again. The drives used in DVD players are hard-wired as the master,that's why you see no jumper.
On any IDE channel(cable) you can have two drives,one is the master and one is the slave and must be jumpered that way. Cable select eliminates the jumper to select master or slave,the drives position on the cable determines master or slave. System assemblers use cable select because it eliminates the need to check drives for jumpering. They simply buy all their drives jumpered as CS.

[trooper11]

well that didnt help. i tried changing the jumper on the lite on drive to all three places, but none of htem made a difference.

now let me ask this. if the problem was the ide cable, would the lite on drive still power up? what i mean is, would the drive light still come on? im just thinking there might be a power problem

any other ideas?

[wulf109]

It's possible the IDE is not connected properly. Did you make sure you observed the proper oreintation of pin 1 on the cable. Is pin 1 properly connected to the DVDplayer board and to the DVD drive. Some cables are not keyed and can be plugged in with pin 40 instead of pin 1. Make certain pin 1 is next to the power plug on the drive. The DVDplayer board should be marked showing pin 1,be sure the cable has pin 1 to pin 1 0n the board. The cables usually have a red stripe at pin 1.

[trooper11]

no luck. the pin 1 is lined up properly, it is marked with a red line.

i just dont get what could be missing. i mean if they are both pc style drives, you should be able to switch it out. the only thing i can think of is firmware. could that somehow affect it?

or could there be a power problem? the only other dvd drive i could try is a dvd burner i have, but i highly doubt that would work.

[trooper11]

oh and another thing. just for kicks i took an old cdrom drive i had and hooked it up.

well what do you know, it powers up. now it didnt spin up and i couldnt work the tray, but the power light came on. i dont understand why the dvd romw ould be any differnt

[wulf109]

I suspect the power supply in the DVD player is bad,probably no 12 volt output. One last test,hook up the DVD loader from the DVD player in your computer and see if it works. That will confirm a bad power supply in the DVD player. Hookup the loader as the only drive on the ide cable because your computer will see it the master. Leave your hard drive on the other IDE cable. You can only have one master on each IDE cable.

[trooper11]

ok i finally got some time to continue testing. i hooked the drive up to my pc and it spun up fine, i put in a dvd and it played wihtout problems. so it seems that the problem is elswhere.

If it does have to do with the power supply, is there any hope of fixing it or replacing?

[wulf109]

Try to contact the manufacturer,they will usually sell you the part you need. Replacing the power supply is not difficult,there's only a few connectors. Just make a diagram of the original.

[trooper11]

any idea where i might find replacement parts? its a DreamX 108. I went the manufacturer's site, but after emailing them I havent got any response.

[wulf109]

Give this a look. This guy repairs APEX power supplies.

http://www.drx9000repair.netfirms.com