This is my stand alone DVD+-R/RW recorder purchased in 2004. Lately it's been very picky as to what discs it loads. Sometimes needing to eject and load a few times until it actually loaded. Opened it up and cleaned the laser optic to no avail. Just so happens I have a Lite-On 16x DVD-+R/RW DL I pulled from my PC because it was slow to rip CD and DVD. Also had to clean the load belt on it. I kept if for a spare after purchasing a HP 1040 which rips about 3x as fast. The idea dawned upon me that maybe the PC Lite-On drive would work in the stand alone burner. I verified that it did indeed work but would not mount as the original was mounted minus the metal covers. I uncovered the PC drive and it looked very similar to the broken stand alone drive but did not have mounting holes. So similar that all the working components, laser mech/control boards/load motor were for all practical purposes identical. After all they were both Lite-On drives only difference one used to have metal covers.I stripped the plastic chassis and simply swapped the working components. Laser chassis + board, loader motor + board. I couldn't just change the laser chassis because it was different just enough not to chance it but the boards were physically identical so it was just as easy. One thing that was a major difference was the replacement was a Dual Layer drive whereas the original was not. I hadn't tested recording but just simply plugging in the new drive and playing a DVD on it convinced me this could work and it did although it does not load blank Dual layer discs and I really didn't expect it to. Also I think I found the problem when I removed the lasers from the old chassis as a ribbon cable going to one laser broke off very easily where it was soldered to the laser diode housing.
Have a look at some of these pictures if you are interested. They show both drives and the plastic chassis and the working parts.