Can standalone's drive be replaced?

[ha13may]

Hi!

My brother has a sony DVD/VHS combo player. The VHS side works perfectly but the DVD player won't. It will usually play a movie for a few seconds and then read error will be displayed on the TV screen. I've tried pressed, different DVD-Rs, RWs. Almost 90% come up with read error. I'm quite sure the DVDROM has malfunctioned.

My question, can the unit be opened up and the drive replaced with a PC DVDROM? I know standalone dvd player can be bought cheap but this unit did cost him a bit a year ago and I've got a DVDROM lying aroud.

Thanks in advance!

[steptoe]

I can't see why not, assuming it uses a standard IDE interface and power supply plug otherwise you're screwed

Unless you fancy stripping your DVD-Rom drive out of its casing


What model is it, and then you have a better chance of tracking down if this is possible

[redwudz]

A lot of them use a standard DVD ROM drive, and as steptoe said, if it has the 40 Pin IDE plug and the 4 Pin Molex power plug, give it a try. The only thing that may be different is the DVD drive faceplate may have to come off. It just snaps in. But probably not.

If you take the cover off the unit, you should be able to see what the setup is.

But I should mention that if you haven't tried to clean the laser lens, I would try that first. Especially if there is a smoker in the house or there is a fair amount of dust in the air. One little piece of dust on the lens can cause a reading problem. I use a little 'canned air' first and see if that helps. If not a foam tipped Q-tip and some denatured alcohol usually does the trick. A cleaning disk is another option.

[lordsmurf]

Depends on the unit.