Yelo 800 no longer reading discs

[Channel Hopper]

Which is a real shame as I used to use it to watch some of the region 1 NTSC DVDs I have here. Since it must be 12 years old I doubt I will ever find a replacement drive

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Yelo-800DVD-Multi-region-DVD-player/dp/B00005AW15

Has anyone successfully transplanted another model DVD drive into one of these to restore the operation ? It is a bog standard four wire supply and IDE cable connection. I'm not even worried whether it opens the tray fully at the front.

 

[Channel Hopper]

And.........Ta Da ! running.

I found a really early DVD rom drive from a late(ish) Pentium 2 tower, and with what remaining time I had today, set the tags to 'slave' and ran her up. Got all the right lights and then with some small changes to the chassis fixings, its in there and running within about an hour, including the new carriage direction to eject through the original flap door. (Display cover was removed to save damage - OK, she fell over and it dropped out .......)

So now I can watch the Twilight Zone DVD collection (and a few imports from early eBaying days again).

Last picture shows the Yelo player is also old school surround integrated, and so I now need to revise the connections behind the TV for sound delivery. Ho hum.

 

[Channel Hopper]

Forgot to add, the Yelo 800 has Macrovision disabled as standard and the ability to play almost anything thrown at it. The threat posed by this and similar was a key a reason why BluRay was brought out to replace the DVD format.