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The GameCube is Nintendo's fourth console gaming system. Repair is simple and requires only common tools.

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Factory laser potentiometer resistance seems too low.

I received a GameCube from someone who got it from their friend. Their friend says it can’t read discs anymore (I haven’t checked myself, I’m worried about burning the disc) and it might need a laser adjustment. I know the laser visually lights up when trying to read a disc (I used a trimmed dvd-r to test). I’ve opened the console up and to see what the laser potentiometer is set to, and it seems to be set to 205 ohms. Now I’m really hesitant to do anything right now because my console is a DOL-001 model, and from what I can find online, the resistance should be around 450-600 ohms.

Is it all fine? What should I do?

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crwdns2933897:0crwdne2933897:0

Hi!

Personally, I would leave the potentiometer at stock. What you can do is to replace the laser. But a known issue is that the capacitors failed and need to be replaced.

So, the first step would actually be a re-cap of the drive it's capacitors and see if that works!

You can get them here: Nintendo GameCube Logic Board / Power Supply / Accessory Cap Kit - NTSC and PAL (you need the optical drive caps).

If that failed, you can try to replace the laser and see how that goes.

If that failed again, then you might want to check the potentiometer.

Is it opened up before? Did already someone tried to adjust the potentiometer? If this is the case, you can try to change it for 450 ohms as a start..

Please let us know how it goes!

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Thanks for the insight! I’ll look into replacing the capacitors.

When opening the console, everything felt factory-tight, so I don’t think anyone had opened it previously.

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Alright, thanks! That's a good sign :)! Please let us know how it goes! Hopefully you will get it fixed again!

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Jason Squires crwdns2934231:0crwdne2934231:0
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