Phat PS2 buying guide

[SP193]

Thanks all for your help.

I have one last question concerning the laser. When buying a used PS2, what's the best/fastest way to check that the laser is working fine?

I found a test here:


What do you think?

That's probably inaccurate.

I usually make the console play an original Playstation disc (PS1 disc, for those who don't know that the PS1 is actually called "Playstation" instead)... since Playstation discs have the lowest optical density (Black). This will test the laser emitter that's used to read CDs.

Then I'll try to play a game burned onto DVD-R disc (Of high quality, like Verbatim discs) if the console is modchipped. This is because these burned DVD-R discs are darker than the original Playstation 2 DVD discs, and can test if your console's laser has a weakened laser emitter (For reading DVD discs).

Lastly, I'll try to play original Playstation 2 CD and DVD games.

While you try to get the console to play any of the discs, you should not see any of the games' cutscenes stutter, skip, and/or hear the console struggle to read the disc (E.g. you should not see a "Disc Read Error" message, and you should not hear any clicking sounds of the laser eye moving up and down).

Note: This "clicking" sound I've mentioned is actually much softer and higher pitched than the usual sound a laser would make when it's being shifted around the drive (Which is much louder and dull).

[cib3k]

Does an original, un-modded V7 PS2 play original PS1 games?

[dlanor]

Does an original, un-modded V7 PS2 play original PS1 games?

All PS2 consoles will also play nearly all original PS1 games from the same region.

Some very few PS1 games are incompatible due to use of hardware access routines that do not use Sony device drivers or otherwise break the development guidelines by Sony. But the PS2 console and its bios was designed with full backwards compatibility as one of the chief design goals, so as to ensure strong game and gamer support from the first launch day of the console, long before many real PS2 games were available. And for most PS1 games this compatibility works fine.

Best regards: dlanor