Japanese Saturn not loading games/music cd's.

[MDaveUK]

It's one I got while I was abroad in an import shop about 10 years ago, it has no mod-chip or other modifications. However, I did get a cartridge with it that let me play US and Euro games on it, and back then it worked fine. I bought a few games for it, all different regions all worked fine.
But now I only have access to a Doom USA version to play on my saturn and it dosn't seem to work.
Also audio cd's don't work, infact it says 'Drive Empty' after spinning the disk once.
It tries spinning the disk 3 times when I put Doom in, and during that time it says 'Checking disk format' after which the text disappears and the disk stops spinning.

I've checked the ribbon cables for the CD drive and saturn main board and it all seems ok, not sure what the problem is.

It's a real shame to see a console I spent so much on back then not work now

If you need any more info about the saturn just ask.

[marurun]

It kinda sounds to me like the laser might possibly be VERY misaligned. Or perhaps there's a drive controller chip that's toast. You might want to consider buying a replacement saturn. I don't know how easy it is to swap parts, but chances are you could try buying one from a different region and just swapping the CD drive unit. If someone else knows more about the possible pitfalls for this, please speak up.