Hi...

A few days ago my v4 PS2 stopped playing games completely. It still switched on and went to the options screen, but the disc wouldnt be detected at all, whether it be CD, CDr, DVD, DVDr... Its not modded in any way (i use knife trick still).

Anyway, since i've been visiting here for so long i guessed it was the laser... so i first went about trying to clean the laser lens. I used a bottle of methanol and a cotton bud. The thing looked pretty clean. Anyway, i tried to load a CD, but left the lid off so i could see what was happening. It span for a moment and then just stopped... I wasnt sure whether this was the common thing to happen if your laser wasnt working properly, and it still wasnt loading so i decided to try and adjust the pots. I dont have a multimeter or ocilloscope so i just tried to do it 'by eye'. I turned them little by little and just kept on trying the CD again. It wasnt happening. Same result each time. Just spins for a second and then nothing. Anyway, I finally turned the pots about a quarter turn and then decided to stop.

So i was wondering what I should do... Is the laser knackered or is it something to do with the motor? It doesnt even seem to recognise the disc is there. If it was the laser i would have guessed that when i switched the PS2 on, it would go to the red screen where it says Insert PS2 Format Disc.

If it is the motor and i have to buy a new one, is this a seperate piece that i will be able to get hold of, or is it part of the laser kit that i could buy?

You might be the victim of cdrips. Alot of people have reported hearing horrible noises with thier PS2 reading CD game backups and several have reported it actually killing thier drives prematurely. Don't know what to tell you about the drive itself. Once you get it fixed though stick to using DVD-R and you should have better luck.

If you can finagle your way to seeing what's going on with the laser mechanism, that might tell you more. I've had CD players stop working because the motor fries. Not totally sure with the PS2, but with a lot of other cd player devices, when they start up the laser head moves at least a little bit. (Something that can usually be observed.) If the laser head doesn't move at all when you power up the system or put in a disc, that would be my guess at a cuplrit.

thanx... any more help?

As MuzlL0dr says, all lasers in cd drives will move to the center and the laser eye will move up and down trying to focus on the cd inserted (you can do this to a PS1, just observe the laser eye while the lid is up and you hold down the lid switch, you will notice the laser spin twice, and it move up and down and then stop.

If none of the above happens I would say that the laser eye is knackered and needs replacing



andyw

You adjusted the pots.....Hmm, it's a dead laser now, needs replacing, from experience i can tell you. Your going to have to buy a replacement laser.

it is not the motor. i an not sure if it is even the laser. i have 2 v4 ps2's that do the same thing. i adjusted the lasers using a multimeter and after that didn't help i bought a new laser and that didn't help either. all three lasers do the same thing. they move to the center of the disk move up and down focus and spin the disk in little pulses and eventually stop and give disk read errors. i am starting to think that in some of these machines that the laser is actually ok and there is a processing chip on the motherboard that is the problem. usually when a laser is going bad they play dvd or cd games but not both. then they only play origionals and slowly play less and less games. for your ps2 to all at once not play anything i am guessing the motherboard has a problem

Im fairly certain its not a problem with any motherboard chips... My PS2 wasnt exactly perfect before this all happened. It used to skip and make horrible noises, scratch my CDs, spend an age loading etc etc... It didnt stop playing anything really, but it wasnt exactly running perfectly well...

@ pepsik - As for adjusting the pots. I did try to clean the laser first, and then when it still wasnt working, as a last resort I adjusted the pots. If the lasers dead then its dead. My PS2 wasnt working anyway, and it looked like i was gonna have to buy a new laser for it (which i would have already done if it wasnt for the fact im not certain its the laser anymore) so i might as well have messed with the pots before spending £35 on something that i could *perhaps* fix for free! You say im going to have to buy a replacement laser but are you fairly sure that its going to make any difference. Im not exactly made of money atm, and i would rather do it in the order: buy the most likely compnents first!

@rd350ypvs - I cant get in a position to see that kind of thing... not while a CD is in! However, i cant really hear anything either, so im guessing that the laser is not moving up or down. If it was definitely a laser problem, would the PS2 go the RED SCREEN instead of the PS2 options screen where if i go to the screen with mem card and cd/dvd on it says i have no media inserted!

I understand the monetary situation, i waited 4 months before having the funds available to fix my ps2. My system would click and take forever to load, and it made some pretty nasty little rings on some disks. Unfortuantely your laser doesn't read any media, I was fortunate enough to be able to read cd media. I spent 2 weeks adjusting the laser height to read cdr media perfectly, and when i finally got my new laser, everything worked out fine.

On Another note my friend has an unmodded v4 that started making loud clicking noises and would freeze on games, we took it to a repair shop and they said it wasn't fixable, that the dvd controller died.

I really don't know what will be the fix for your system, the dvd controller thing or the laser, the symptoms are really similar, but atleast you can fix a bum laser.

thanx for info pepsik.... I'll go with laser as soon as i can fund it....

If the laser can't detect a disk that is inserted you will just go to the system/browser screen, since the PS2 thinks the drive is empty. If you try a original dvd, copied dvd game, original PS2 game, copied PS2 game, original PS1, copied PS1 and they ALL fail to get past the browser screen then it is pretty certain 100% fact that your laser is cream crackered. UNLESS your modchip is interfering with the boot process in a way that is not meant to i.e on the old PS1, if your pin 5 came loose, it would only boot copies and not originals, whereas if 5 & 6 become lose or wrongly soldered, then NO games would boot, so check for that as well



andyw




andyw

right.... well i dont have a modchip... im a knife trick user... so i guess that its definitely the modchip... thanx for the info rd350... the thing about the browser was what i was really trying to find out... i thought that was the most important evidence - whether the ps2 detected a disc by using the laser or by a mechanical system which detects the disc on the spindle.