Repairing the PS1: How not to do it
So, I have a PS1 game station I mostly used to play Spyro on my big TV, for the novelty of it, because PS1 emulation is pretty flawless. I however collect the games, and do have a big folio of bootleg discs just because you can print them on blank CDs. Thus, I learned of an issue with my PS1: It struggled to read Fin asl Fantasy 9, a game I was playing on my PC, and figured it might be cool to play on real hardware.
So I looked into replacing the CD reading eye.
Apparently the CD units in PS1 systems are readily available from dubious chinese sellers on alibaba and aliexpress, but are prone to failure themselves, not ver reliable bits of replacement part, and most people suggest ripping a new one out of a still working Playstation. That won’t solve my issue though surely, the new eye will be just as old as the current one right? So I pressed on. Lo and behold, I found a fella offering hope, by the name of Alex. Alex wrote this handy dandy guide here on repairing your PS1 eyes and how you actually should just throw your dying one out, you should just lube it up and clean it.
https://alex-free.github.io/unofficial-ps1-cd-drive-service-manual/
Taking Alex’s advice I ordered a box of supplies, and a couple days later, I had everything I needed to go ham on this fucking grey box. armed with paintbrushes, wd40, and rubbing alcohol, I scrubbed and scraped and soaked and flooded tiny parts with the rust eating lubricant until I had a clean shiny toy. Then the fun part began: lubing it up. I sat down and began slowly and carefully pumping droplets of oil into these microscopic holes in the motor housings. Slowly and carefully, pushing it in with the tips of paintbrushes, and rotating the little CD spinner majig, for quite some time. By the end of it my fingers were pretty greased up too, and slimy. But I persisted.
Finally, after an hour or so, I thought I had it all right. I lubed it all up, I put fresh oil in, I greased the gears, I put it all back together, I put it in the PS1, I hit power, I got to the main menu of Final Fantasy 9 aaaand
Shit stopped reading the disc. In fact it stopped reading any discs. The disc reader refused to react to power at all.
distraught, I took the entire fucking thing apart again and scrubbed it all down, hard, and took extra time to carefully wipe up any oil and grease that was outside of the tracks this time, really keep it inside the lines. I put it back together, put in Crash Bandicoot 2, a game that wasn’t giving me trouble before, and it played great. it loaded faster than ever. Excited at the idea that I might have fixed it I shut it off, swapped to Final Fantasy, turned it back on, got to the main menu, tried to start a new game aaaaand
Black screen, disc drive refuses to power on anymore. It was at this moment, I unplugged that stupid shit and put it on my bookshelf. I’ll be ordering a dubious quality chinese CD reader for it soon I’m sure.
