Hm. Well, I guess a new drive may be in my near future.

It’s strange that the drive has no way of detecting motion or position, other than the laser on the disc. It has no “track 0” switch like most optical drives, and it doesn’t have an optical motion detector on the head motor. It just flies blind, so to speak. I noticed that after seeking erratically back and forth for the first several seconds after “activating” the UMD (pressing the cover switch), it seems to “pick up” the disc and seek in rather more defined movements. Didn’t really have anything great to test it on though, just the intro graphic for a game.

After getting it all back together (DEAR GOD this thing is a pain to disbumemble and rebumemble…Log in to see images!, I found a neat new toy in the PSP firmware update, the PSP store! Kinda cool. I guess I don’t need blasted UMDs anymore when I can just buy and download a game onto the Memory Stick. Sweet deal.

edit: I also lubed every mechanism in the drive laser movement system… I seem to have reduced the friction on the components a bit. Maybe that helped, Iunno…