PS2 PS2 reading disc error

[marshgull]

Since recently, I have four PAL PS2 Slims SCPH-70004 (one donated by a family memebr, three purchased second-hand). I have only one original PS2 Game (F1 06).

Two of the PS2 cannot read the disc, two can. I was able to run FDVDB burned disk on one of those two that are able to read and run DVD's. Set up the Sony Magicgate card that way. Now I can run iso's (SMB method) thanks to the card in all four consoles.

My take is that the DVD players are starting to fail in this relatively old PS2 hardware. It could be as well I need to clean the lenses. Any good method or manual to clean the lenses?

 

[gogogadgetman77]

The optical drives are a convoluted issue that pretty much everyone gets wrong. In this day and age you have to learn how to diagnose the issue and can't just simply go hey this wont read games can I just do a thing and fix it, as there are too many problems with these now to do so. HOWEVER, for a general place to start;

Test the disc and see what it does, does it do ANYTHING at all? Does it spin at all? even if only a tiny bit? Does the laser even try to move at all? If you have a console that the optical drive just does not seem to do anything at all, then you have to lean towards the motherboard first. The optical drive ICs on the motherboard fail as well as SMD components, in many cases your optical drive is perfectly fine but you have an issue with an SMD component on your motherboard that controls the disc drive. So simply cleaning or even replacing that drive will yield zero results. This is also not always the case, I've had drives that are completely dead but were 100% in spec on the motherboard and thus was the disc drive in that case, so again it's a thing you have to teach yourself, learning console behaviors, narrowing down the most probable cause, etc.

Because this is an optical drive controlled by the motherboard You can also have individual failures, especially in the slim. By this I mean you can have a spindle motor that has seized up, the spindle should be able to spin freely with your finger, if its very stiff and doesn't want to move much then you might be able to replace the spindle motor. This is the case for all the optical components such as the worm motor, heck even the ribbons because so many people rip them up trying to remove things not knowing what they are doing. So check each drive component too.