I have a Sony DBP-S301 Blu-Ray player with a bad drive. It's
basically a standard IDE Blu-Ray drive. I would like to replace the
drive with a PC BD drive, but it refuses to play any discs, even
though it can at least read them (with the original drive it says "no
disc".

Is this a case of the drive being married to the player, or will it
only work with the specific model drive it originally came with? Most
DVD players that use an IDE drive will work with any computer DVD-ROM
drive.

Does Sony provide any way to marry a new drive to the player outside
the factory? Is there a service menu?
Andy Cuffe

Andy Cuffe wrote:
I have a Sony DBP-S301 Blu-Ray player with a bad drive. It's
basically a standard IDE Blu-Ray drive. I would like to replace the
drive with a PC BD drive, but it refuses to play any discs, even
though it can at least read them (with the original drive it says "no
disc".

Is this a case of the drive being married to the player, or will it
only work with the specific model drive it originally came with? Most
DVD players that use an IDE drive will work with any computer DVD-ROM
drive.

Does Sony provide any way to marry a new drive to the player outside
the factory? Is there a service menu?
Andy Cuffe



Hi Andy,

I can tell you about a similar problem I encountered with an Alesis ML-9600
which is a hard disk recorder. The CD player failed to read the disk.
Looking at the drive it appeared to be a standard Sony drive you would see
in any PC. I called Alesis and asked them if I could just put any CD drive
in there. I was sent a list of compatible players for that unit. The
firmware in the machine will only recognize a specific brand of CD player.
I'm guessing that in your situation, the same may hold true.

Good luck.
--
David Farber
David Farber's Service Center
L.A., CA

On Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:48:52 -0400, Meat Plow
wrote:

On Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:58:41 -0500, Andy Cuffe
wrote:

I have a Sony DBP-S301 Blu-Ray player with a bad drive. It's
basically a standard IDE Blu-Ray drive. I would like to replace the
drive with a PC BD drive, but it refuses to play any discs, even
though it can at least read them (with the original drive it says "no
disc".

Is this a case of the drive being married to the player, or will it
only work with the specific model drive it originally came with? Most
DVD players that use an IDE drive will work with any computer DVD-ROM
drive.

Does Sony provide any way to marry a new drive to the player outside
the factory? Is there a service menu?
Andy Cuffe


I've had success marrying a LiteOn PC DVDRW/DL to a LiteOn stand alone
DVD recorder but the replacement was highly similar to the defunct
drive. I'm sure the drives firmware plays a role as I reused that
board off the failed drive. The actual servo/laser electronics board
for the new drive was not exchanged. Here are a few pics at the bottom
of the page and on the second page.

http://s273.photobucket.com/albums/j...1/Electronics/


I have a suspicion that this is like the Playstation 3 where the
drive's serial number is programmed into the player, and it will only
work with the original drive. I'm sure there's a simple way to
reprogram the player, but does anyone know if it's something Sony
allows servicers to do, or if it's a secret? Does the service manual
say anything about drive replacement?

I'm sure I could find an exact replacement drive, and swap the boards
(assuming the original board is good), but it's not worth the cost. I
would like to just use a PC drive, like I've done so many times with
DVD players and recorders.
Andy Cuffe

On Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:17:32 -0500, Meat Plow
wrote:


I'd be doing some reading at the doom9.or and videohelp.com sites.
What you may end up doing some firmware flashing. There are a lot of
unique firmware tools where you can actually edit the code to suit
your needs and cross platorm flash but you'll have to do some research
first.

I have been keeping an eye on things, but so far, very little hacking
has been done to Blu-Ray players. The manufacturers (particularly
Sony) are doing a MUCH better job of locking the players down that
they did with DVD.

All this speculation could be answered in a minute with a peak at the
service manual.
Andy Cuffe

On Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:25:19 -0600, Andy Cuffe
wrote:


All this speculation could be answered in a minute with a peak at the
service manual.
Andy Cuffe



Well, forget that. I did another search for the service manual, and
found a pdf he

http://www.eserviceinfo.com/download...S300,S301.html

It's 4 pages long, and the only thing it tells you is how to eject a
disc if it won't power on. I guess it's non-serviceable...
Andy Cuffe

"David Farber" wrote in message
...
Andy Cuffe wrote:
I have a Sony DBP-S301 Blu-Ray player with a bad drive. It's
basically a standard IDE Blu-Ray drive. I would like to replace the
drive with a PC BD drive, but it refuses to play any discs, even
though it can at least read them (with the original drive it says "no
disc".

Is this a case of the drive being married to the player, or will it
only work with the specific model drive it originally came with? Most
DVD players that use an IDE drive will work with any computer DVD-ROM
drive.

Does Sony provide any way to marry a new drive to the player outside
the factory? Is there a service menu?
Andy Cuffe



Hi Andy,

I can tell you about a similar problem I encountered with an Alesis
ML-9600 which is a hard disk recorder. The CD player failed to read the
disk. Looking at the drive it appeared to be a standard Sony drive you
would see in any PC. I called Alesis and asked them if I could just put
any CD drive in there. I was sent a list of compatible players for that
unit. The firmware in the machine will only recognize a specific brand of
CD player. I'm guessing that in your situation, the same may hold true.

Good luck.
--
David Farber
David Farber's Service Center
L.A., CA


I agree with David. I'm a bit surprised at your findings that

"Most DVD players that use an IDE drive will work with any computer DVD-ROM
drive"

as over the years, I've found this to be seldom the case on ones that I've
worked on. Most often, the drives, although appearing to be perfectly
standard IDE units from well known manufacturers, are actually OEM versions
that have an additional few bytes of data in their identifier, that makes
them specific to the machine that they are fitted to, and which looks for
that extra info, at boot up.

Arfa

On Sun, 1 Nov 2009 16:35:31 -0000, "Arfa Daily"
wrote:



I agree with David. I'm a bit surprised at your findings that

"Most DVD players that use an IDE drive will work with any computer DVD-ROM
drive"


I guess I've been lucky then. The few times I've tried it, it has
worked fine, even on a Sony DVD recorder.

I did manage to come up with a solution to this problem. I have a
pile of Playstation 3 parts, including a couple of drives. The drives
are completely different, but I found that they use the same optical
pickup as this player. I swapped the pickup into my bad drive, and
now it seems to be reading discs fine.
Andy Cuffe