Use a PC-CDROM LASER on your Dreamcast (SAMSUNG GD DRIVES only) Part 1
Disclaimer: i take no responsibility for damaged dc consoles use this tutorial at your own risk only use this as a last resort ive only done this one time to fix a dc for a friend
Necessary items:
1 Dreamcast with SAMSUNG GD DRIVE (this guide DOES NOT COVER yamaha drives)
1 A PC-CDROM drive. I've used a Creative CD5233E drive, but it ***COULD*** work with another drives. CD-RW drives DOES NOT WORK.
1 Phillips screwdriver
1 A precission screwdriver, if it's the flat one and the smallest one, better.
1 saw
and A LOT of patience...
First of all, you will have to dissasemble the PC CDROM drive. Not putting pics because this is somewhat an advanced tutorial. Once you have done this, you have to detach the lens from the rest of the drive, do this with EXTREME CARE as you could fuck it up too, rendering this guide completelly useless unless you have another drive... Once you have the lens/laser in your hands, put it in a safe place as it will be used later.
Next step, dissasemble the console
Unscrew the 4 screws, remember the 4th one is under the modem. When you are done, flip the console and take out the top cover. It will end up looking like this:
Next, you have to take off the GD drive COMPLETELY, unscrewing the 3 screws show in the next pic
Firmly and carefully, detach the drive from the rest of the console.
OK, now we are going to work with the drive only, so you can put the console in a safe place, cuz this will take some time to complete... and it will make a lot of dust.
You have to separate the drive pickup from it's metallic box, taking off the 5 screws showing in the next pic.
Carefully separate the 2 metallic parts of the enclosure, and pay attention to the cables and the flex/ribbon cable, because these are EXTREMELY fragile and you can cut them without any effort. You will en up with something like this...
Take out the flex/ribbon cable from both the gd rom controller PCB and the lens pickup, and put it in a safe place. Detach the 2 set of cables from the gd rom controller pcb. My suggestion is to put both the flex/ribbon cable AND the screws into the bottom part of the metallic box so you don't lose them.
Next, put a soft handkerchief or something like that in the place you are working, since it involves putting the drive upside down and you don't want it to get more fucked up than it is now (i suppose lol)
With the precision screwdriver unscrew the tiny screw that's holding the tiny piece of white plastic that shows next...
