Drive will not spin or accept/eject disc's, insert triggers power-on

I have a fat 40gb Playstation 3 that I was tasked with fixing.

The problem I cant seem to figure out (aside from replacing the drive) is:

• The disc drive does not engage when a disc is inserted.
  • The Playstation does however, turn on if it is off when I slide a disc in (hitting the trigger switches)
• If I put a disc in the drive (while the drive is disassembled) and hold down all the trigger's, the drive does not spin up and the laser does not turn on.
  • since it doesn't seem to get a signal about a disc in the drive, I cant eject. just the double beep comes from the playstation.

So I am left wondering what is up with this. Should I just replace the whole drive?

I don't have a second working drive that I can use to test if it is something coming from the motherboard..