What kind of luck do you have with finding laser stuff in random sleds?

Today I went over to one of our computer stores in town and offered to pay the owner for any broken DVD burners he had lying around. He said no need, and gave me a DVD burner for free. It was some random brand-name burner (dell or HP or something) that I'd never heard of, so I was not sure I would find a 5.6mm diode. I took it apart and found all kinds of motors and stuff, but nothing unusual in the mechanical systems. The sled was a real gold mine though. Some AR coated glass lenses, dichros, etc, even a small PBS cube, which I'm not sure why they need in a DVD burner because they easily could have just used a dichro in the same place... but why should I care? It was also the first burner I'd found where the diode was not a flat plastic one that I can't use or something. It appears to be a decent diode too, it ran fine for a few minutes at 255ma. It's my first working harvested diode

What kind of luck have you all had with random DVD drives you got from scrap computers or gotten for free/cheap? This is my first real stroke of it.

PS anyone know why they might have at least one dichro AND a PBS cube in this thing? There are only two diodes that I can see... a red and IR (that ran for a few seconds then died).

I suppose the cube is a beam splitter. It is not used to combine beams from lasers, but to send the light from the diode to the disk, and then the reflected light to the sensor. Without this cube the sensor and laser diode would have to be in the exact same position for the system to work, which isnt very practical

Is also used for combine the wavelenghts, yes ..... more precisely, the red for the DVD function and the IR for the CD function ..... so usually they are coated for AR in these ranges, not in green or BR (but can always work, anyway )

The part when the beam reflected from the discs is sent to the revealer, this usually is made with a dichro or a splitting mirror .....

I guess that makes sense- but I believe a dichro is used to combine the beams. I guess they might use the PBS cube to split the beam a little bit, but that seems like a lot of work to line up the diodes like that as opposed to simply using a partially reflective mirror...

Most of the ones I been given or found have been the F/P LD ones. But I have read promising thing on the "Flattie"
Dieselmarine just made a build out of one.
One day I'll get around to firing one up (I'll have to make a heat-sink first, although)
I believe the plastic ones are the wave of the future
Here's a interesting article about ALL plastic diodes.
Bright Sparks Make Gains Towards Plastic Lasers Of The Future