PS2 Does playing backup PS1 discs on a PS2 burnout the laser ?

L

l3gi0n

Member
I have a 50001 and a 50010 consoles, I want to use the mechapwn exploit so that I can run backup PS1 discs....

I will be using Verbatim CD-Rs...

Would this burnout my lasers on my consoles ?
 
unless you use very high quality CD-R or the lens is perfectly calíbrated, i would highly advice against it, worst case scenario you get burn marks on the discs and these don't come off with polish, very worst is the lens raises too much trying to focus and hits the disc, damaging both in the process
 
Verbatim is good brand, I use their DVD-R's

Some will disagree or tell you other brand but its more about what you've gotten to work yourself and you shouldnt have to pay much over $30 for a 100-pack of blank disc's and Verbatim is about that maybe a couple bucks more depending on the store you buy it at

Also I'm just gonna drop the theoretical that no PS2 or laser-eye is perfect. Ive personally had 3 PS2's burn out while using original PS2 discs only and usually what happens is that when it stops reading silver-bottom DVD's it will become able to only read the blue-bottom discs when your laser eye is almost completely shot.
 
Unfortunately the last Ps2 with good optical drive (3900X) aren't compatible with MechaPWN. With those models you really don't have to worry, even feeding them with total crap they can barely read, nothing will get damaged.

From 5000X onward, even burning perfect discs, they'll generally burn out after a couple years. That's statistically speaking, you might find that one out of 1000000 perfect exemplary (i.e. I have a friend that bought one of the first Ps3 models most prone to YLOD that's still perfectly working. And it is powered on 24h almost every day since 2007...).
 
  • I have 2x used 500xx and buying one more and I will mechapwn all three.
  • I will only play PS1 backups through the optical drive.
  • I will burn them on Verbatim CD-Rs.

How many games can I finish to the end before all my 3 consoles' lasers burnout ?

Unrelated question:

How long will the PSU's on fat PS2s last ?
 
I was just recently testing a ps1 game on my ps2 and it wouldn't work. I thought my entire ps2 laser was broken, but checking further it could play DVD's and PS2 disks fine, but returned "disc read error" when inserting music and ps1's (cd-roms). I was worried I'd have to replace the laser, but after opening it up, cleaning out all the dust, and then swabbing a q-tip with alcohol on the laser it was able to read cd-roms again.
 
l3gi0n said:
  • I have 2x used 500xx and buying one more and I will mechapwn all three.
  • I will only play PS1 backups through the optical drive.
  • I will burn them on Verbatim CD-Rs.
How many games can I finish to the end before all my 3 consoles' lasers burnout ?

Unrelated question:

How long will the PSU's on fat PS2s last ?
Click to expand...

Ps1 games put much less stress, hopefully you won't have any issue. With most burner you'll get the best result burning at 10x speed with Verbatim CD-R. You could also use POPStarter and use CDs only for not compatible games.

My 39004 PSU died two years ago. I used to leave it on stand-by (never powering it on) for months, don't do it.
I bought a brand new PSU on ebay for 14$.

pianohombre said:
I was just recently testing a ps1 game on my ps2 and it wouldn't work. I thought my entire ps2 laser was broken, but checking further it could play DVD's and PS2 disks fine, but returned "disc read error" when inserting music and ps1's (cd-roms). I was worried I'd have to replace the laser, but after opening it up, cleaning out all the dust, and then swabbing a q-tip with alcohol on the laser it was able to read cd-roms again.
Click to expand...

Often and willingly also the CD/DVD trimmers get misaligned. Screwing them (very slightly, even half millimeter could be enough) clockwise or counter-clockwise will solve.
 
If you are that worried about wear and tear on your PS2 by playing PS1 CD-Rs on it then just get a PS1 console to play those games. There are plenty of options to boot CD-Rs on them now, you can even use your PS2 to install the FreePSXBoot on a memory card to do so.

I don't think playing high quality CD-Rs on your PS2 is going to "burn out" your laser. Using your system at all puts wear and tear on it. Would you rather use it for what it was meant to do or just stare at it? Sure, eventually it might need a repair. You can address that when it comes up either by getting it repaired or selling it off to someone else who can do that.
 
If you bought your PS2 used you may want to try just running roms on a PC emulator, using a mini-pc, or I hear ps3 has better compatibility for PSX-software emulators. Personally, yeah I've tried PS2psxe and Popstarter and they both have 50-75% compatibility at best. The mechapwn exploit (or tonyhax for my model) works wonders compared to those $%@#! emulators. Even the snes emulators have a lot of trouble on ps2, but my ps2 is old so there is no point in unnecessary wear on it, unless I have a friend over and want to play an old multiplayer game or something.
 
POPStarter is actually very good (especially nowadays adding also Hugopocked patches). When the game you want to play is compatible that's the best way for sure.
Other than putting no stress on the optical drive, you get VMCs, Cheat Engine, IGR, etc.
 
Peppe90 said:
POPStarter is actually very good (especially nowadays adding also Hugopocked patches). When the game you want to play is compatible that's the best way for sure.
Other than putting no stress on the optical drive, you get VMCs, Cheat Engine, IGR, etc.
Click to expand...

Totally anecdotal on my part, but I didn't actually realize at first that popstarter (on ps2) was an emulator so I played through Armored Core with it. While the game ran without noticeable glitches there was major slowdown in some sections. Armored Core final level was so much more brutal as a result, though I somehow managed to beat it. I then played that section with Duckstation and realized how poorly it was running on my ps2, so I compared with disc versions and running off the disc Armored Core ran much better on ps2 as well.

Long story short, just because the game boots and seems to run okay with popstarter may not mean it's running well, and I guess you just won't know if it's running correctly unless you also try the disc. So I've moved onto burning discs and playing ps1 games that way for now (thanks to mechapwn). I haven't thought too much about laser wear, as I think it's not super difficult to replace the ps2 laser if and when it burns out...
 
While using POPStarter may be fine in some cases, I'd certainly disagree with it being "the best way" to play any game. It depends on your priorities. I find the best way to play PS1 games these days is on a real PS1 with an optical drive emulator. No need to use any discs. But they aren't cheap which is where something like POPStarter has an advantage due to being low cost or free if you already have what you need to make it work.
 
MottZilla said:
While using POPStarter may be fine in some cases, I'd certainly disagree with it being "the best way" to play any game. It depends on your priorities. I find the best way to play PS1 games these days is on a real PS1 with an optical drive emulator. No need to use any discs. But they aren't cheap which is where something like POPStarter has an advantage due to being low cost or free if you already have what you need to make it work.
Click to expand...

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for mstation (https://twitter.com/_ramapcsx2) to release soon. Trying to get PS1 games to run well is such a weird rabbit hole right now, will be great to just be able to plug'n'play an ODE into a psone...
 
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