A FIX: LG WH14NS and WH16NS (soldering required)
Posted: Thu Jan 09, 2025 2:35 am
First I want to say that I only recently found this forum and I was happy to see the wealth of knowledge that exists here wrt flashing firmware to the LG drives. THANK YOU ALL
Second - I had flashed my drives (both a WH14NS40 and a WH16NS60) so that I could backup my bluray collection, however the drives both made the same noises and would try to read 3 times and then the OS and MakeMKV would report I had no disc inserted.
Looking around the forum many of you have reported that these drives are not the best, but its what I had on hand, even though they were years old and i'd hardly used them.
I must have tried flashing dozens of times before giving up and figuring this must be a hardware failure of some kind. First I cleaned the lenses with alcohol (didnt work) then I disconnected/reconnected all the ribbons (didnt work) and looked for damage.. and I found the same problem on both drives: One of the wires that the optical eye assembly is suspended by was broken, same place on both drives.
Broke out my microscope and soldering iron and got to work:
Pictures of the Failure and my hacky fix are in this album - id love to post these inline but im not sure what image service to use these days
https://photos.app.goo.gl/KT3nym3hWxPZyXTY9
Ive ripped 5 BD's now with these drives and they seem to work well for now. Posting this for others who may not want to throw out those LG drives just yet
Second - I had flashed my drives (both a WH14NS40 and a WH16NS60) so that I could backup my bluray collection, however the drives both made the same noises and would try to read 3 times and then the OS and MakeMKV would report I had no disc inserted.
Looking around the forum many of you have reported that these drives are not the best, but its what I had on hand, even though they were years old and i'd hardly used them.
I must have tried flashing dozens of times before giving up and figuring this must be a hardware failure of some kind. First I cleaned the lenses with alcohol (didnt work) then I disconnected/reconnected all the ribbons (didnt work) and looked for damage.. and I found the same problem on both drives: One of the wires that the optical eye assembly is suspended by was broken, same place on both drives.
Broke out my microscope and soldering iron and got to work:
Pictures of the Failure and my hacky fix are in this album - id love to post these inline but im not sure what image service to use these days
https://photos.app.goo.gl/KT3nym3hWxPZyXTY9
Ive ripped 5 BD's now with these drives and they seem to work well for now. Posting this for others who may not want to throw out those LG drives just yet