[spedmetal]

Make sure your ribbon cables are in correctly and in securely as well. The tracks on the ribbon cable that control the laser eye functions may be making good contact but the ones that tell the motor to move may not be. Also you will only read voltage at the worm gear motor when it is running. You also mentioned something about having the top of the DVD drive off (with no disk?), if the laser eye doesn’t read anything it won’t move the laser as there is nothing for it to read. You also asked if the laser moves to the center (all the way into the drive spindle) on its initial boot if it in not all the way to the inside of the disc area that is where it will move to. You can try doing this to see if it will move. With the PS2 turned on eject the disc tray. Then turn the PS2 off with the switch on the back. Take the top of the DVD drive off and you will have access to the laser. Gently push the laser from being up agents the spindle to the outer disc area (not too much though because if you do it can jam agents the disc tray when it tries to close, just enough so you can see if it moves or not). Now leave the top of the DVD drive off turn the switch on the press eject to close the tray. You should see the laser move to the spindle then a red laser light from the laser as it tries to read.

One other thing that I thought of is maybe you have replaced the old laser with a new laser. If so then make sure you have de-soldered the static guard solder blob from the back of the laser (some remanufactured lasers don’t have the solder blob and some times even if they are new the reseller may have de-soldered it before sending it out). If you didn’t do so then the laser eye will work and try and read, but the laser unit its self will not move at all. Found this out the hard way one time.