DVD Player and LCD Screen

Our DVD player stopped playing DVD's so I decided to open it up and see what I could see.

With the top off I turned it on and put a DVD in. The problem was that the motor for spinning the disc itself was not working and since the disc was not spinning the laser could not read the data. I took the tray out of the box and looked at the motor. It seemed fine, so I put it back in and tried again. When the CD was suppose to start spinning I just gave a spin with my hand and amazingly this seemed to get it going. I guess the motor was stuck somehow. Once I got it started I was able to remove and insert a DVD many times and it continued to function correctly.

Since I got the DVD part working I thought I'd take a look at the source of a vibrating noise which I thought was this rather large heatsink. Strangely the heatstink seemed to be wired up to receive power from the board below it as seen in the picture below. Once I got the heatsink off I reazlied that it had no fan or anything attached to it as I thought there might be. I really wonder why it needs power. Turns out the vibration was coming from the exahust fan. I removed it and rotated it 90 degrees and that seemed to fix it. It may have just needed to be tightened down.

I also recently ordered some cheap LCD screens. I was amazed to find this rather decent sized monochrome LCD display for only $4.50 on All Electronics. I haven't had time to hook it up yet. Hopefully I'll get it working soon.