3DO ZONE Forums

OK, so I recently received a 3DO system and was disappointed that it failed 5 minutes after receiving it.

I loaded up Road Rash, it started up but I noticed that the system sounded rather rough while reading the disc (grinding and clicking). I managed to get into the game and failed a race. An FMV sequence then played after this point. When this sequence ended, however, the system was trying to read the disc to return to the menu but after 30 seconds of trying it simply remained at a black screen.

I restarted the system and found that it no longer read any disc.

So I opened the system up to observe what was happening and it appears that there is no life in the drive at this point. When I close the tray, the access light flashes but the laser assembly fails to move, the laser does not shine, and the disc does not spin.

Any suggestions or thoughts on the matter?

After looking more closely, I think I can say that the gear which drives the laser is cracked.

All motors are confirmed working.

After fiddling with it and reassembling everything the lens actually came to life for a second but froze again very quickly. It's very clearly a problem with the gear as, once this occurs, I can no longer smoothly move the shaft unless I remove the little motor from it.

Any thoughts on what I can do to fix this?

OK, made further progress. After playing with the gear a bit and greasing things I put it all back together and was met with an improved situation.

Now the disc spins and the laser moves attempting to read. Problem is, it won't actually read anything. :\ It takes the disc, spins it, stops, spins again, stops eventually ejecting the game. I tried making a minor pot adjustment without success.