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[sajain84]

The thing that I wanted to ask was whether the POT tweak thingy is for real ...
I have seen many people do it and lot more screw it ... I myself being the latter half.
I followed the instructions 100 % correctly, but now my drive does not read anything even after having backed up to the original settings.

The basic concept is to lower the resistance of the laser to get a higher power beam.
Moe's tutorial mentions that if we reduce the resistance, quite a bit, the drive gets noisy and may even blow up.
I'd live with that.
But even with the lowest settings, the drive is unable to read the disc.

So, is there a big flaw in the Pot Tweak ... or is my iinterpretation of the whole idea gone wrong.
As of now, I am busy checking the drive for ever 25 ohms of change in the resistance.
I hope I get a match, or I'll probably have to hack a PC drive for it to work.

Any answers out there ?

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[sajain84]

I forgot to mention above, that I have a 1.3 Xbox with a Phi;ips DVD ROM drive.
An X-Ecuter 2.2 Lite + mod chip to go with it.
And if its needed, X-Ecuter Bios and evox installed with a 40 gig HDD.

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[ZoOed]

It is a reality... I did it on my failing Thomson.. and it improved marginaly.  I did it by feel.  
I got too greedy and played more and fried my Thomson...now I get the ole Service error 12 no power to the DVD... so hence be careful! DOH!!!  <

[Perplexer]

I highly advise against doing a pot tweak UNLESS you have an oscilloscope and know what you are doing.

I don't do them myself.  <

[rhonk]

I'm with my buddy Perplexer on this one, if you are the faint of heart when it come's to electronics and such, don't attempt the pot tweak or you will more than likely mess the dvd-rom up completely. also, keep in mind when 'pot-tweaking' all your doing is telling the laser to shine brighter, same concept as overclocking. if you push something farther than it's designed for, you might break it eventually. although i'm not trying to discourage, just trying to educate. hope this helps! rhonk.  <

[Brazilianaire]

it didn't work for me,  I tried it and was having a helluva time getting a reading on the ohms, that resin must have gotten everywhere.  I have it set somewhere at 1800-1900 ohms,  when I tried the first time it stopped reading pressed dvds,  I thought I was sol and I accidently pulled the blue and red wires off, so i figured I had to fix it anyway, now i'm back up and running.

I wonder if it would be possible to desolder the POT that is really inaccurate - I couldn't get an exact change each little twist could be anywhere from 50-300 ohms.

On ebay the samsung drives are going for 100 bucks a piece right now, that's not worth it, might as well buy a new xbox and get a few other things that are usable, or just mod in a drive that can read everything but the original games.

don't do it, its not worth it  <

[sajain84]

I'm not exactly the faint of heart when it comes to electronics.
I've played around with the XBox plenty.
Modded it myself and even changed the HDD myself.

Guess I should have had this converstation before I jumped into the pot tweaking thingy.
I'll try to fix it a couple of times more, and if nothing happens, I'll most probably try to get a Samsung PC Drive, Rip it and fix it in the box.

Wish me luck.
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[grug]

Never done it on my Xbox, but I eventually killed my Dreamcast doing the pot tweak on that. (To make it read CD-RWs, not CD-Rs) It worked fine for a while, then wouldn't read original games, then it stopped working entirely after about a year.  <

[solar_eclipse2]

Yeah, pot tweaking is a reality in the fact that it can be done. Not in the fact that it works...it is one of the more sketchy parts of working with electronics. I've done it to a PS2 and come up empty. The best piece of equipment to use is a 2 channel oscilloscope. Use the 'scope to check the original resistance on the pots and record them. If you have another working drive I would check the settings on the working drive and try to apply them to the broken drive. If you have ever used an oscilloscope you have some idea what the proper pattern to see for a cd/dvd drive is. You dont want the peaks or the valleys to be flat, they need to be rounded otherwise you wont get a proper resistance on the laser. Anywho, get a book on oscilloscopes. And even if you can make the proper adjustments it doesnt mean that going back from the new settings to the old ones wont cause damage either. Try if you dare   <