Grumble, grumble, grumble! I’ve been having a rather frustrating time with some replacement Sony PlayStation CD mechanisms I picked up from eBay. They looked like they would be just the thing for repairing a collection of faulty PlayStation consoles, but it turns out there’s a fairly significant problem. There are two videos because I thought I’d lost the first recording, made another, then found the missing one. Naturally!

I’ve got several PlayStations with damaged optical drive assemblies, particularly around the spindle and the plastic hub that holds the disc in place. Rather than trying to repair every little part individually, I ordered a collection of complete replacement mechanisms. Seemed like a sensible idea at the time!

The replacement units even arrived with little inspection stickers on them. Very reassuring, isn’t it? Unfortunately, after having a closer look at the spindle motors, I noticed something wasn’t quite right.

On a normal PlayStation CD mechanism, the spindle hub sits at a particular height above the motor. With these replacements, the motor shaft appears to be too short, leaving the hub sitting much lower than it should.

That’s where the trouble begins. The plastic disc-retaining hub isn’t properly supported, so it can pull loose when removing a CD. Worse still, the little retaining pieces can break, leaving the mechanism unable to hold or spin a disc correctly.

Just lovely! Exactly what you want from a brand-new replacement part.

I’d ordered roughly ten of these mechanisms, largely because I needed good spindle assemblies and replacement laser hardware. Unfortunately, they’re not much use for that purpose if the plastic hubs keep breaking or coming loose.

I managed to obtain refunds for two of them, but that’s hardly a wonderful outcome when you’ve ordered an entire batch. A few bad experiences with sellers can certainly make buying replacement parts a rather frustrating exercise.

The laser assemblies themselves might be perfectly serviceable, but the mechanical construction is letting these particular replacements down. I’ll have to see whether I can salvage the useful components without damaging even more of them.

Perhaps the PSIO project will eventually make dealing with these ancient CD mechanisms unnecessary! That would be rather nice.

For now, I’m left with a collection of replacement drives that aren’t quite as useful as I’d hoped. What a disappointment!