After removing the chip and the wires (they were set in a tape sandwich no less than 2mm from each other), the PS2 seems to work fine again. It may have been the dvd controller points or just wires interfering with each other, but it was just enough to make it behave erraticly. I was just about ready to take it back and bid on an eBay PS2... Anyways, I'm going to reinstall it using alternate points (since I'm better at doing via connections rather than controller legs) and try to 'recovery reflash' the chip. It didn't work before, but then again the PS2 was behaving irregularly. FYI the chip was placed right below the BIOS and next to the BGA chip that's below the dvd controller.

Otherwise I'll be buying a new chip, reflashing the bad one, then putting it in a v3 w/bad laser & hdd for my bro.