Crazy Hitachi 79 senario

[darrenp76]

Ok, so my friend had a Hitachi that stopped reading disks, dvds and games altogether, and had a samsung to put it the 360. So I say no problem I'll help, go to unlock the 79 with the unlock disk and realize that it wont read the disk to unlock it. I tried the pot adjustment and the greasing the motor and neither trick will work. Once out of every 10 times I put the disk in it sounds like it will try to read it then it comes up unplayable disk, otherwise the laser goes up and down 3x then reads open tray.

Do I have to buy one of those passkeys or is there another way to get the key?

[cyantific]

Did you put it into modeB?

[darrenp76]

Yes. I used Slax and it shows up in Windows as drive G.

[sadalius]

Sounds like the laser went belly up on you man. I would look at getting a new laser for it. They aren't that expensive if you look around on ebay. You might have to research to see which laser you need to buy though.

[darrenp76]

Thanks Sadiaius. I ordered one today. But, I just want to make sure I am correct. There is no way to get the keys off of a 79 unless it reads a disk, correct? I got it into FWTB and it seen the 79 but then of course it wanted me to put a disk in and wait 20 seconds. But I'm definatly going to replace the laser.

[sadalius]

Right. You have to be able to run the unlock disk and if it can't read it, it can't unlock it. The 79 is a two step drive, first you have to have it in mode b, thats not problem with slax or a connectivity kit, but then you also have to unlock it, which requires it reading the unlock disk.

I would recommend that once you put that laser in the drive and get it going to get a dump of it so you would have your drive key so you could replace it later down the road if you needed to.