For the past year, my original Xbox One hasn’t been working properly.
Specifically, it won’t accept discs. DVDs, Blu-rays, games – they won’t even go into the slot.
Digital games and streaming content work fine, but my wife and I purchased a new television for the living room during the holiday season and were eager to dive into our old movie collection. Plus, as a member of the Writer’s Guild of America, I get award screeners in the mail, and we really needed to watch The Disaster Artist.
I decided it was time to fix the Xbox One. Well, after my wife spent two hours on the floor of our living room threatening to open the console with a screwdriver, I decided it was time to fix the Xbox One.
Opening up an original Xbox One console isn’t nearly as daunting as taking apart a PS4 or disassembling a Switch Joy-Con. Most of the plastic case just pops right off. It does involve voiding the warranty, but I had no warranty left to lose.
Aside from a single tricky ribbon cable at the front of the unit and irreversibly stripping three of the screws holding the top of the inner shell to the bottom, the teardown went pretty well. Once inside the console, all I had to do was pop off a couple of cables and pull out the Blu-ray drive. Removing its metal casing, the problem became clear. There were two discs in the drive at once.
Makes sense. My children, a pair of six-year-old boys, have a great fondness for CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays – anything round and shiny, really. They’re why I don’t own a record player or a circular saw. Circles are pretty great. And circles that might play movies? Even better. They are not, however, big fans of eject buttons.
Fine. I could pull the discs out, and everything would be as good as new. Only they wouldn’t come out. The discs were firmly lodged in the drive. To get them out, I would need to repair this Blu-ray drive to death. After a quick check on eBay replacement drive prices ($US30 [$38], not bad), I tore in. That’s when I discovered there were not two discs in the drive.
There were three.
Three discs.
THREE.
To get them out, I basically had to strip the drive down to nothing, saving the daughter board, which needs to be swapped over to a new drive in order to function properly (hooray, soldering!). Apparently my children were trying to watch Transformers: Headmasters disc 2, Real Steel and Trolls, all at once.
Turning the discs over revealed why they weren’t coming out easily. They were stuck together with… something. I don’t know.
I love my children. I really do.
Comments
19 responses to “My Beautiful, Perfect Children Discovered A Way To Fit Three DVDs In One Xbox”
That last sentence. I better run that through my very special sarcasm detection software.
….please wait….
My computer exploded.
you need to speak to Mark Serrels lol
Oh that made me laugh. Good times. Good story for their 18th birthday. By that time they might be getting birthday presents again.
Any thoughts as to what the mysterious substance might be? It looks like some sort of glaze or frosting. Donuts?
I’ve seen a couple of Snacktaku’s that featured his kid. You are probably correct.
And one of the discs was upside down. Double fail.
Two arguments for a HTPC/Media Server right there
Not that I use discs any more, but this is one of the many reasons the missus and I will never have kids.
When people ask me while i don’t have kids I reply “because I’ve met other people’s kids”
I used to think like this. I’m very glad that my wife had more sense.
Gonna have to start using that one. A tad mean, but fair.
This comment to me just seems really sad.
I prefer my kids to my xbox one, but maybe that’s just me.
It’s great that you enjoy you kids, I would hope that all parents do. I’m just a very selfish person that would resent how much effort I would have to put into parenting. At least I acknowledge and understand that it would be a very bad idea for me to have children, both for them and me.
You do you bo. I’ll do me. 🙂
Heh
You think that’s bad? Apparently when we were kids, my siblings and i thought it would be convenient to use the VCR player as a rubbish bin (they cost $1000 at the time yeesh), so it was quickly filled up by paddle pop sticks.
What was wrong with us!?!?!
You were putting paddle pop sticks in when they should have been tapes of Disney cartoons.
X-P
At this point your only goal in life should be to live long enough for your kids to have their own children so you can send the grandkids home with bad habits 🙂
DIS, true wisdom has be mutterred
I’ve told my kids, that if the xbox one gets broken, it won’t be replaced. That’s enough for them to be super-careful with it.
You can fit atleast 5 in a wii console if I remember correctly… mums supposed to change the discs was the rule… then Mum had no idea why it would work….. tweezers did the job… they kept coming ????