Anyone with mad PSOne/PSX Hardware skills?Follow

So, I bought a PSX a long, long, long time ago.

I bought it right after I got home from a failed Boot Camp attempt way back in late-1998.

It has worked for me for a long time before the CD Drive started going bad (it required me to tilt the system up on its side, otherwise FMVs would play choppy and the games would take a long time to load otherwise).

Then, a year plus ago, I got an LCD TV in my gaming room, which forced me to unhook everything except the Wii, and 360 because older game machines look like crap on an LCD TV.

Fast-forward to July 4th of this year, I moved my TV into my bedroom after re-arranging a bunch of furniture.

I fire up my PSX to play some good ole Grandia (I tried it on a PS2 once, it is prone to lockups for some dumb reason) because I suddenly remembered I've got Grandia 2 sitting in my folder that I never even played. My cousin gave it to me for free because he had another version of it for another gaming system or some-such.

So anyways, I fire it up, and it won't load any games whatsoever. Nada.

I do some experimentation and I find out that the lens isn't moving back-and-forth at all, no matter if I have it sitting normally, tilted 90 degrees on its side, or even upside down.

So at this point, I go "meh, its shot" and then I go to Amazon, and order a used PSOne, figuring that surely Sony would have wised up by now and put better CD drives in their systems.

It comes a few days later, and I hook it up, press the ON button and suddenly I hear a LOUD buzzing noise, constant. I'm like "what the..." well I open it up take the game out, turn it on with the CD cover open, no buzzing. Close the cover, buzzing.

Then I unhook it to see if maybe something's stuck inside of it, that's when I notice there's something inside of it loose and yet again, the mechanism that moves the lens back and forth appears to be broken -- the lens moves back and forth freely just by tipping the machine side to side.

I'm going to open the thing up with a screwdriver, but most likely this one's shot too. That is, if I could FIND a screwdriver that would actually fit those ridiculously small screws. The only one in the house, I can't find...

Is there a way to fix these things, will any of the parts from my old PSX fit in the PSOne? It sounds like maybe a piece of plastic or something broke free, if it is, say a gear or something, would the old PSX have a gear?

Is this a common problem with PSOnes or did I just end up with a lemon? Grandia isn't the only game my PS2 won't handle -- Xenogears is also famous for lockups, and Legend of Legaia (all 3 of these games I happen to like) doesn't even play properly at all (sound effects are way off time with the animations in battle, that would drive me absolutely crazy).

Anyone got any suggestions?

If only Sony would learn some friggin Backwards-Compatibility that Microsoft and Nintendo does... I wouldn't be having this problem. Arrgh.

There's also a method I'm not allowed to speak of here where you can emulate PS1 games on the PSP. I've found it to be a godsend at times.

SpoilerThough, I do need to find out if it's worth upgrading from 5.50 Gen D an the method required.

Update:

I finally found that screwdriver last night, and opened the PSOne up (the new one I bought that was "DoA").

It turns out whoever owned this thing last, abused the ever-living crap out of it. There were small pieces of random bits of the case flopping around inside of it, I cleaned all that out. The front bottom-right of the machine had some sort of brownish-red dried residue all over it, either heat damage, or something was spilled on it, or perhaps it was set down in water or something, I don't know. Thankfully, the mainboard is intact and other than the drive not working, it did work.

Anyways, I figured out what the buzzing noise was -- it was exactly as I suspected, the gears that run the lens carriage (the thing that makes the lens go back and forth) were broken.

What I did, was I opened up my old PSX and I discovered that the two disc drives were almost exactly the same. I plugged the old PSX disc drive into the PSOne, and found that it worked! It actually read the CD and I got a game's title screen to come up, and even play an FMV.

But, there were two differences between the drives:

1). There were longer "pegs" that had to be trimmed. I did this with a simple Dremel tool.
2). The circuit tape that goes from the lens to the mainboard was a little longer, this took many tries to stuff it in there without it getting in the way when the lens carriage goes back and forth.

After a couple hours of fiddling, I put it all together, turned it on, and it works!

Though, I have to leave it upside down (my old PSX was one of those models that slowly wears out and you have to tilt it on its side or lay it upside down to get it to work) and sometimes it doesn't want to read the disc at all, not sure why.

It'll work for now, might try to see if I can find some place around here that still has a PSOne for sale or something and pick one up for cheap. But at least I got something that works "for now".

Might also try taking the drive apart further, to see if the lens can be separated from its carriage, if so, then I could use the new lens in the old carriage (which has its gears still intact).

I wish I could have just swapped the gears, but they used special plastic gears with fasteners that can only be used once. You can't remove the gears without breaking them unfortunately.

Edit: Hah! It DOES come apart. Okay, this fix should be simple then.

Edit2: SUCCESS!

The thing loads up perfectly with the PSOne sitting right side up, I let the game load to an FMV and it played without any skipping or hesitation at all.

Edited, Sep 13th 2011 8:02pm by Lyrailis

Edited, Sep 13th 2011 8:21pm by Lyrailis

Well since the main point of this thread been solved I noticed a little tidbit in there I have to say something about. OH MY GOODNESS PLAY GRANDIA 2 ALREADY. I never got the chance to play 1 but I pick up 2 about a year and a half ago when mistaking it for 3. If it wasn't for dragon age I would say it was properly the best RPG gaming experiences I had that year. They actually did emo and ankst correctly, I was shocked! How could such an old game get it right when so many other games have gotten it soooo wrong.(Glares at the Final Fantasy Franchise) The story plot points are pretty standard by today's standards but executed well.

Also it gains points for being one of the few games I was so lost in the moment I actually started shouting at the characters in the game like I was standing next to them.(The one scene I had in my mind even had my cousin completely mystified and in the moment. She actually watched me play the whole game.)