Plextor PX-W4012TA - pickup SLED failed \ VOGONS

Plextor PX-W4012TA - pickup SLED failed

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First post, by cansting

Posted on 2026-08-14, 20:32

cansting Offline

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Rank: Newbie
Posts: 40
Joined: 2025-03-03, 01:35
Location: Waterloo, ON

Since no one in Greater Toronto Area is willing to even take a look at this one, lemme try here:

I have this old Plextor cd drive that stopped reading CDs recently - laser seems to move, but CD doesn't spin. Error code 9 - "Pickup SLED failed"

Model: PX-W4012TA

Anyone have any experience with reviving Plextor drives from around this time and willing to share some tips?

Win98:
InWin A500 with Asus P2B, Pentium II 450, 512MB PC100, Creative 3D Blaster Annihilator Pro +Diamond Monster 3D II, YMF719E-S+ Diamond Monster Sound MX300

Win XP
Deepcool Tesseract with D875PBZ, P4 3.0 prescott, 3GB DDR400, HIS HD4670 iceq

Reply 1 of 3, by Disruptor

Posted on 2026-08-14, 22:54

Disruptor Offline

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Posts: 1961
Joined: 2018-03-22, 18:31
Location: European Union

I've successfully revived 2 Plextor SCSI CD-Rewriters drives by reflashing the firmware.
There were both LEDs flashing yellow. However, it was still detected by SCSI BIOS and after rewriting the firmware both of them worked fine again.

There was another Vogon who could be helped with that information.

But I don't know whether this will help on IDE drives too.
And perhaps your malfunction is different.

Reply 2 of 3, by Locutus

Posted on 2026-08-15, 00:25

Locutus Offline

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Joined: 2021-08-26, 14:19
Location: POLAND

I have an identical Plextor in my pile of drives waiting to be cleaned/repaired.
I know for certain that it isn’t working.
I’ll get to it soon and keep you informed.

Reply 3 of 3, by cansting

Posted on 2026-08-15, 00:47

cansting Offline

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Rank: Newbie
Posts: 40
Joined: 2025-03-03, 01:35
Location: Waterloo, ON

Well, it is picked up by BIOS with no issues, the moment I noticed something is off was when "Booting from ATAPI" showed up at POST and stayed for like 30sec - till the drive realized it can't read anything and started flashing 9 blinks error code and kept flashing forever when OS was booted, even with no cd in it

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