Reparing two PS2 Slim’s
Before starting, I just wanted to say that the italian version of this post will soon be available on my dad’s website
Some time ago (how long precisely, even he doesn’t know) my dad bought two PS2 Slim’s at a flea market for a few bucks. In an unknown state, but including the external 8.5V power supply, he figured out they would be fun to (eventually) restore together.
As it turns out, they both had some problems and weren’t completely functional: one had a little piece of paper inside the DVD bay saying “laser to be changed”. It could boot fine, but had indeed trouble reading data from DVDs. The other had the power LED turned red when the power supply was plugged in but pressing the power button resulted in the power LED turning briefly green and then red again.
Red Light, Green Light. Red Light again.
I worked on the second one first. I never owned a PS2 myself, nor a PlayStation in general, so I’m totally new to this world. Searching on the internet, I found some interesting insights about the problem. Regarding regular PS2’s, iFixit said that such a problem could be a a failing power switch on the back. Unfortunately, PS2 Slim’s don’t have such power switch, so back to the drawing board. At visual inspection, the board looked fine, no apparently damaged or burned components, so the only thing i could think about, given my (little) previous experience in this kind of repairs, was some kind of short-circuit or other failure on some power line. Here’s what the console did when trying to turn it on:
Making the semaphore work again
I came across this video on youtube saying that fuses failing are common and some posts on r/consolerepair stated that the fuse PS17 is a common point of failure. Since a fuse that is not blown is just a short circuit, I started checking all the fuses on the board with my multimeter, finding three that were blown. One of them looked suspiciously like a capacitor, but the shell was white, which is uncommon for a cap. So I desoldered and checked it with a capacimeter to be sure it was (or wasn’t) a cap. Turns out it was a 100nF one. The other two, had clear markings which recognized them as fuses.
As a test, I shorted the two blown fuses, tried to turn the console on, and it actually worked!
And the console booting:
Yes, yes I know just shorting fuses is very very bad practice, since you never know if they’ve broken because of aging (this console is almost 20 years old!) or they’ve blown as a consequence of something else malfunctioning. Unfortunately I did not have replacement fuses available, but I don’t plan on using this console until they arrive. When they, do, I’ll replace them and further investigate the fault if they blow again.
Number 2
I found a piece of paper inside the DVD drive bay which said “Laser to be changed”. I noticed immediately that the outer plastic of the console was severely bent. Opening the console, it was clear that someone else had already been inside as the console was modded using the Matrix Infinite mod, which is used to bypass DVD copy protection. When putting it back together, the plastic was so deformed that I was almost unable to close the console.
Since I was inside, I took the opportunity to clean the dust with off the DVD reader with some IPA and Q-tips and spray the mechanism with some good old WD-40, paying attention not to spill neither IPA nor WD-40 on the lens.
The console booted fine, showing the Matrix mod splash screen at startup, right before the Sony logo.
I tried loading some original DVD that were bought together with the console. At first the DVD wouldn’t even start spinning. But pressing on the bent part of the plastic lid the drive started spinning and actually reading what was on the DVD and started the game. This led me to think that there were some switches under the DVD lid used to detected when the lid is closed. With the lid being bent, the switched where not being pressed and therefore the DVD would not start spinning. So I used an hot hair gun to warm the plastic lid and bent it back into shape, being careful not to overheat the plastic and melt it down. Here’s the result:
After being, the DVD drive work flawlessly. This console was modded by the previous owner to bypass the DVD copy protection, so it can also read non-original discs.
Conclusion
I usually love repairing electronics, and this two consoles were much fun. See you next time!