I fixed my PlayStation!
A few months back, I bought a copy of the “has to be awesome” Intellivision Lives! disc for the PS2 at the local used game shop. Sadly, it didn’t work, and I had to return it, attributing it to a bad used disc. This weekend, I stopped at a game shop while visiting my folks and found the same game, so I snapped it up. When I got home, it wouldn’t work either. The PS2 made a horrible crunking noise and eventually gave up with a “disc read error.”
I figured the odds of two used discs going bad were slimmer, and I noticed that the data side of this disc was blue. A few Google searches for PS2 blue disc problem revealed that this was pretty common - the system uses two different lasers or something, one for DVDs and one for CDs, and the alignment can sometimes be off for one or both of them.
This guide told me all I needed to know, from how to open the damned case to how to adjust the laser angle. The only pain in the butt is that you don’t know what the angle’s supposed to be, so the process basically involves turning a knob, turning on the PS2, trying to read a blue disc, turning it off, turning the knob, etc.
Of course, I broke Jason’s first law of hardware repair: don’t put everything back together right away. It turns out that the alignment isn’t perfect, and once in a while I still get disc read errors, but for now I can get around it by reinserting the disc until it works. If and when I get more blue discs, I’ll go through the process again. Or I’ll just get a new console.
As for the game, it’s pretty fun, but it suffers a bit from the Intellivision’s controller style, which doesn’t translate well. I wanted it for Shark! Shark!, which doesn’t need anything fancy, so I’m happy. There are also a few video featurettes that are worth watching, but not more than once.
Now that I’m feeling all handy, I think it’s time to fix the broil element on the stove…
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