Topic: I've mentioned this before, but I fix game consoles for a living...

[BranDonk Kong]

...it is my full time job. I am the lead technician at an extremely successful electronics repair shop in Melbourne, FL. So, if you break your Wii, DS, PSP, 360, PS3, iPod, cell phone, etc., and don't want to have to wait on the manufacturer *and* save money, send me a PM.

For the DS (all models) we do any repair that you can possibly imagine, from replacing the housing, LCDs, cartridge slot(s), switches, speakers, microphone, WiFi card, etc.

For the Wii we do the disc drive, bluetooth adapter, replace buttons (power, reset, eject, sync), fan, casing. Basically the only thing we don't do on the Wii is the NAND or GPU.

This place isn't exactly crawling with people in need of repairs, but we will beat the price of sending your console (any console) to the manufacturer, get it back quicker (although Nintendo does get their stuff exchanged incredibly fast), and give a discount to any forum member of NWR.

[donssword]

Hi Brandogg--I have a Wii DVD Drive question for you, since you seem to know the hardware.

I just picked up Call of Duty: Black Ops Wii, and I keep reading about how it will brick your Wii optical drive because of the intense disc reading required to stream all the map content.

That being said, if the DVD Drive goes bad and I replace just the DVD/optical drive, is my Wii hardware still the "same" or do I lose all my WiiWare games?

I'm waaaay out of warranty and I don't mind cracking open my console and swapping the optical drive, as long as my Wii is still identified as the same piece of hardware as far as Nintendo and my Wii is concerned--same ID number, same friend codes, etc.

Otherwise, I think I am going to be selling Black Ops on ebay--the cost of admission seems mighty steep. Thoughts?

[BranDonk Kong]

You won't lost anything by switching drives, sorry for the late reply.