Laser Diode from Laptop burner

FatTony

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
70
Location
South East, UK
A couple of weeks ago we had a DVD burner fail in one of the Dell laptops, I had the drive replaced but Dell never collected the faulty unit. Seeing as it is a quiet afternoon at work I thought I would take apart the faulty drive and see if the laser(s) worked, unfortanately the inside didn't look like anything else I had seen on the internet so I wondered if someone could offer any help?

Here are a couple of pictures of the laser assembly (taken on a phone cam so excuse the quality).

laser_top.jpg


laser_bottom.jpg


I am assuming that there are two laser diodes and looking at the underside of the assembly guess they'll be the little blocks with the gold backs and twelve gold pins.

Has anyone come across something like this before? If so do you know how to identify the pins required to power up the lasers? Also what sort of voltages should I start with?

Thanks in advance,
 
I have had a closer look at the pins and identified the ground as one of the middle two pins. The other middle pin gives a slight reading on the continuity test on the meter so might this be the positive?
 
the 2 gold things on the bottom pic are the diodes. I've seen them like that before. they are a pain to use.
 
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