"Chipped" PS1 Problems


TangentDelta

Member
Joined
May 25, 2012
Messages
106
Location
United States
Not sure if this is the correct place to get help on this, but if it isn't, could you please move it?


Long Story:

Right, so yesterday I stopped by a flea market looking for any vintage computers (I'm a vintage computer collector), and happened to find a huge stack of PS1s, each for $5. Since it wasn't a console I had already, I figured that It'd be a good idea to buy one of them. I picked out the one that looked the cleanest, and bought it, along with a D-Pad controller for my C64.


When I got home, I decided to open it up to see what sorts of goodies laid within. After taking out the billion screws, I managed to take off the RF shielding/heat sink. In the process of doing that, the 4-pin surface-mount header that connects the disk drive motors to the motherboard popped off. A bit dismayed, I set it aside, to see if I could repair it later.


I then took a closer look at the board, revision-A SCPH-1001. There was a bit of spilled cola around the RAM chips, but I cleaned that off. I flipped the board over, and "HOLY COW WHAT'S THIS", a strange mass of wires connected a 12C508 PIC microcontroller to various pins on the CD controller. Upon doing a little research, I discovered that this was a modification that allowed pirated games to be played on the system without using the "swap trick".


I then flipped over the board, put a piece of sticky tack on the bottom of the broken-off header, and soldered it back on, good-as-new.


Now, not having a controller or a memory card for the system yet (gonna try and buy one of each on ebay, though I'd much rather buy them from a collector), I decided to try and play a game that didn't require a memory card. I burned it on my modern high-speed R/W DVD drive, and put it into the PS1. When it got past the orange logo screen thing, it immediately started trying to boot the CD. It then began making noises that sounded like a coffee grinder, and the game's intro movie started.


The intro movie kept freezing, and the laser on the PS1 kept moving around, trying to find a place to pick up again, until eventually the system crashed. I then tried again. This time the movie got a bit further, but the system crashed before it could end. A bit dismayed, I opened up the system and checked my connections and made sure that the gears for the laser were greased. Finding that everything was okay, I tried again, but got the same results.


Online, I did a bit of research, and found that the drive in the PS1 is extremely picky about the speed at which the CD was written. Writing the CD at anything above 2x leaves weird gaps in the media that the PS1 cannot read.


Short Story:

I picked up a "chipped" PS1 at a flea market yesterday and I can't seem to get it to read my backup CDs correctly.


Any ideas?
 
1st: it may alsobe a damaged cdromunit


2nd: did you try to burn at 2x speed?


3rd: Is it a good idea to discuss Burning and playing of pirated games here?
 
1st: it may alsobe a damaged cdromunit


2nd: did you try to burn at 2x speed?


3rd: Is it a good idea to discuss Burning and playing of pirated games here?
1. The CDR unit is fine, it plays music CDs perfectly
2. My mac can only burn at a minimum of 7x. Might need to go into my basement and pull out one of my old computers


3. It's a backup of a game that I owned a long time ago for a PS1 I had a long time ago (oh the nostalgia). The image works just fine in an emulator. Will I use this "chipped" PS1 for evil? No comment.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
If it is an original PS1, I would say the drive has just gone bad and that is why you found it at a flea market. It may be the burning of the disc, but since it is booting up, and getting to differant points each time, I would think the cd-rom drive is shot.


This is what happened to my original PS1, and it was a very commom problem early on. Everyone of my friends also went thru at least 2 PS1's due to this problem. The best way to know for sure, is to try a commercial game and if it has the same problems, you'll know it's the drive. The PS1 was a HUGE seller, so you may be able to find after market replacement drives. Dealextreme is a good place to start.


Good Luck!


Chris
 
Even if it's not physically visible, it's most likely worn down drive. I've got myself a PSX for emulator development (sold my own ages ago) and it has exactly the same problem. It might work with pressed disks but it will have problems reading burned ones. SCPH-1001s had plastic sleds for the laser head that simply wear down while the drive is seeking (later models have improvements but they still wear down).


The common "workaround" for this is place the unit on side or upside down, this sometimes helps the head to get in more parallel position to disk. It's also possible to increase laser power or something like that, but I can't find my notes from when I did my research on this.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The common "workaround" for this is place the unit on side or upside down,
I had to do that with my day one PS1 (upside down) after having it for a number of years. Luckily the PS2 appeared and I used that as a replacement for my PS1 until there were games worth buying for PS2! :p
 
Worn out drive? Hmm...It might be worth going back to the flea market and buying another one of the $5.00 PS1s and swapping their drives.


I'm currently in the process burning my backup on my old iMac G3, and it's actually going at 1x. 40 minutes left.
 
The common "workaround" for this is place the unit on side or upside down,
I had to do that with my day one PS1 (upside down) after having it for a number of years. Luckily the PS2 appeared and I used that as a replacement for my PS1 until there were games worth buying for PS2! :p
Everyone did this, it is the equivalant of blowing in your NES carts back in the day :lol:


Actually, when my PS1 started to act up, I just bought another one, but the side or upside down trick does work, but it is only a temporary fix.


Chris
 
Worn out drive? Hmm...It might be worth going back to the flea market and buying another one of the $5.00 PS1s and swapping their drives.
Sadly, the other ones at the flea market probably have the same problems. This issue wasn't so much about use, as it was about time. Between me and my friends, some of us used the PS1 daily and for me, I didn't use it as much, and just over time, the drive will fail.


This problem was just about as bad as the 360's RRD.


Chris
 
Upside-down trick doesn't work, it's doing the same thing. Any sites where I can get a working replacement drive?


Edit: Actually, what part is it that's worn down? I've done small repairs like this before, and what's to lose?


Edit2: Or would it be worth trying this? http://www.mgboxall....k/focusbias.htm


Edit3: Tried the focus bios adjustment trick. The voltage I'm getting is only 1.5 V. Definitely something screwy.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The part that wore out on the early ps1 was a plastic guide track that the laser mechanism slides on - turning it upside down relieved the problem by letting it glide over the worn surface.


But - the Ps1 was pretty intolerant of 'modern' cd media - it was of an era when the recording dyes were mostly dark green or blue, and media was designed for low speed burns. When the yellow dyes on high speed media started to appear, a lot of those wouldn't work, even though some would play as audio discs.


You might want to find a 'backup' that was burned on one of those old discs, to eliminate that as your problem before tinkering!
 
Thought I'd bring this up my original Xbox needs a new


Disc drive does any old working disc drive from another broken Xbox work or do i need the same model of disc drive ( there are multiple types Microsoft used )
 
Thought I'd bring this up my original Xbox needs a new


Disc drive does any old working disc drive from another broken Xbox work or do i need the same model of disc drive ( there are multiple types Microsoft used )

No you can swap the drives but you need to get the bezel, too. The Samsung drive was supposed to be the best. I have an early Thomson drive (which were supposed to be terrible) but it's still going strong and outlasted my newer and supposedly better Philips drive machine.
 
From what I've been reading, it appears as if the PS1's drive does not like the modern blue dye used on high-speed CDs. My question is: Since the CD hookup is so standard, could I hack together an external drive using a random CD drive I have laying around and maybe a PIC microcontroller?
 
From what I've been reading, it appears as if the PS1's drive does not like the modern blue dye used on high-speed CDs. My question is: Since the CD hookup is so standard, could I hack together an external drive using a random CD drive I have laying around and maybe a PIC microcontroller?

Go the whole distance and make an SD card reader replacement for it, like those floppy drive replacements for Amigas! Those car boot sale Playstations would be well worth stockpiling if someone came up with such a drive replacement... and maybe an SD card holder to attach to the underside of the lid!


On the modern disc problem, you could try one last cheap experiment - the only still readily available low-speed recordable CDs are the ones marketed as 'For Audio'. A 2x or 4x burn on one of those might prove fruitful.


Although their dyes are the same colour as high speed data discs, the formulation is different.
 
Back
Top