Hitachi Open Tray Fix Options

[turbodanny]

Ok, I know there are plenty of Hitachi 360 owners out there that are pulling their hair out because of certain backups giving the "open tray" message, yet your fellow samsung mates are having no problems with the same games and dont they like to rub your face in it!

Well, ive been working on a fix to this, the method is very similar to JayQues elastic band trick. Which i have tried with great results too, the same infact, but i know people who seem to be struggling to get the band the right size and especially for myself had problems with the tray opening fully or not at all. For samsung users I would definately recommend JayQues method though, the sammy crew seem to be having great results with it and JayQue has mentioned the setup inside the DVD drive is different to the Hitachi, as he has been working on the Samsungs for his trick. So props to JayQue and his idea which give me this method and I can only recommend trying this on Hitachi drives at the moment.

First things first, I can not and will not be held responsible for any damage caused to your DVD drive or Xbox 360, if you dont feel confident enough doing this or even dont beleive it works then DO NOT TRY IT!

I can only say I have tried this on 2 Hitachi drives with superb results, both drives are 47DJ versions, running Opa extreme v2.1 7in1, ive not had the time to work on others yet, but im hoping the people may post results if they are willing to try it out. Ive tested many a problem backup with this, which i know work absolutely fine on Samsungs yet on the Hitachi just give the "open tray" error, or the intermitent boot, which may boot once out of five attempts.

Ok, im gonna try and keep this as short as possible and may make a proper tut in the future but wanna see if other Hitachi owners get good results.This will be wrote for those who already know there way in and aorund the 360, so im not gonna hold your hand on this one! and i shouldnt have to tell you to turn off your 360 before trying this.....ok so i have!

Open the Hitachi 360 DVD drive, carefully slide the laser to the back, away from the centre spindle, just to give yourself more room to work with, ok your gonna need a peice of 1mm thick plastic cut into a 3mm x 3mm square, or there abouts, i just took a piece from a dvd case,you could use anything really (within reason) , i even used a piece of rubber at first, just make sure its about 1mm thick.

The plastic piece will be being stuck onto the laser housing so that it press the switch near the spindle. Im guessing the switch has something to do with the laser registration as it will always press this at the start of reading the disc, it also needs to be pressed so that the tray will eject, it must be a way of telling the drive the laser is in a safe place to slide the tray out, anyway, that is by the by. I used double sided tape to stick it on, maybe this can be glued on, but this tape seems to be doing a great job.

Ive used thumbnails guys so just click for bigger pics





Ok, this should give you the general idea, give it a try, dont worry about the switch being pressed in too much now, as soon as the switch is touched the laser moves straight back out and reads the disc, similar as i said with JayQues method, but the band would restrict the laser moving in that bit further. Maybe this can be implented into firmware, i dont know its not my forte' but if the laser can be told to read just that bit further into the disc on boot up, i think it may just work.

Please could anyone post results if they try it, ive had brilliant results from this and its really quite a simple mod, not one open tray message since! Ive even had good results with cheaper media, I can only recommend the usual Pioneer 111d and verbs for backups though, they have always been the best.

This post has been edited by turbodanny: Sep 28 2006, 12:45 AM

[Textbook]

Awesome tutorial, took the time to write that up, take the pics, and edit them!

Should help some people with that Open Tray.

[turbodanny]

Thanks textbook, always the Gent! I know i may be new to posting on here but have been on the forums and XBS for many years, the best site for all the tuts and help you need, done loads of work on xbox's and quite a few 360s and i dont even own one yet soon hopefully!! just wanted to give a bit back, I owe a lot to you guys.

Thanks, Danny

[cerath]

I tried this yesterday and it worked right away. Discs that I never could get to boot before booted right up, even after playing for a while. No more open tray, im so happy. Finally my Hitachi isn't a piece-of-shit-drive in my eyes

For plastic i just used one tiny bit of the discs that are empty (no foil) and laying at the bottom/top when you buy a bundle of discs. If it doesn't work with one layer of discpiece, try two.

[turbodanny]

Great news Cerath, glad it worked for you! Thanks for posting your result.

I would still only recommend 1mm thick plastic, or similar material, any thicker may cause problems, especially with originals.

You see, on original games the DVD seems to have code wrote closer to the centre of the disc, 1mm different from backups infact, hense the 1mm piece of plastic. Im not sure why the backups leave a 1mm space at the beggining of the disc, Im thinking this is why some backups have problems booting up, It may not explain why some work fine though. But definatley something to look into and Im sure JayQue, who devised the elastic band trick noticed this and gave him his idea.

I might post some piccys with measurements in a bit to show the difference between the original and backup.
Its 15mm from the edge of the centre circle to where the code starts on an original and 16mm on a backup.

As ive said before maybe this can be implented in a firmware, or some kind of burning trick, I wouldnt know where to start trying to code any of that myself.

Great that it worked though, a few more people with good results and hopefully a tut for in the archive, gonna work with JayQue on these fixes and write a Samsung/Hitachi fix, if all goes to plan.

[bmf293]

Have the same prob get open tray on my TS ms25, but only on backups that i burned recently, the ones that i backed up before still boot fine, dont understand why is that. can any1 post a link to JayQues elastic band trick would be great. THX

This post has been edited by bmf293: Sep 28 2006, 09:39 PM

[stpfarms]

I have Unrecognized disc error on all my backups. Should I try this before the POT tweak? Yes using DVD-ROM type with Verbatims/Fuji's on a known good burner.

This post has been edited by stpfarms: Oct 2 2006, 03:07 PM

[s10blazed]

:BOWDOWN:

I have been pulling my hair out for days wondering why my backup wouldn't play when I did everything precisely! This trick fixed my Hitachi 59DJ perfectly!

Many thanks to turbodanny and Jayqu3! You're my heros for the day!

[Kramer987]

i dont need to use this but if i one day do, i'll know who to thank

[naziroo]

It's simply amazing when a small little 'hack' like this works wonders! All my backups work fine now... I've had soooooo many problems with the 'Open Tray' message...... I had kept all of my (what I thought were) coasters, and I tried to play them after and it worked fine!

Thanks a lot for this! Would have wasted more money on fake 'coasters' if it weren't for you :-)

[rwk71]

nice trick....i had the "open tray" errors alot but i used the pot tweak now have no probs with back ups. but nice to know there is another method for anyone afraid of "turning that screw"

[ipzfinest]

Didnt work for me...

[bamma]

Didnt work for me...

try 2 layers of dvd! ive done 2
one only needed a single layer but the second i did needed 2 layers!!

[myfranco]

Opened the dvd drive and found that switch.Looks quite easy to do.
It's a great tutorial.Thank you.

[wonkymystical]

Works perfectly on my 47DJ, 1mm thick plastic from DVD case, no more open tray messages