Had a customer send in this PS2 for what I thought would be a straightforward refurbishment process of capacitor replacement, new drive belt, cleaning, etc.
During the testing process I discovered this unit was NOT happy about trying to play games. Customer mentioned this had been the case for a while; they had tried adjusting the laser sled gear (which affects angle/height) and not made much of an improvement. They weren’t super concerned about this as the plan is to continue playing games off HDD via FreeMcBoot, but I really didn’t like the idea of a console leaving my shop and struggling this hard to play discs so besides the usual refurb, learned a new process with this one…
The PS2 is one of my least favorite consoles to work in in terms of disassembly/reassembly thanks to the really annoying optical drive flexes and the controller board flex. This was due for a cleaning service so I got the shell and all plastic parts completely torn down and washed so it could be set out to dry overnight. During cleaning I found several broken posts inside with no pieces I could find (indicating this was previously damaged), along with a tray cover that was hot glued on. It was very clear this had been opened by someone prior and likely repairs attempted. Later on, I ended up stealing those parts from a few parts-only fat PS2 I have on my bench, cleaning them and swapping in as the tray cover was a cheap knockoff anyways and structurally the cracks and broken posts were just not going to offer the sturdiness you would want even when back to being fully assembled.
Once I got the shielding and PSU separated from the mainboard, I then took the duster to all shielding pieces and wiped them down with ISO, removed the old thermal pads on both sides and also detached the fan so the motherboard was free to move around for the recap. I needed to clean the fan anyways, so I carefully dusted and wiped down all fan blades and the surround then removed sticker and added new oil to the bearings and gave it some spins to work it in.
The PSU recap is by far the easiest so I always do that first. Removed the TH caps with my new Hakko gun, cleaned the board thoroughly then installed the PSU cap kit from Console5 (including the large value cap sold separately).
Mainboard is a pain on these because there are no markings for values OR polarity. So having learned my lesson many years ago, never count on finding the exact revision online with all cap details, photograph the exact board in front of you so you can reference those pictures during new cap install! The colored polymer caps do NOT need replacement nor come with the Console5 kit just the surrounding electrolytics, how many that is depends wildly on which board revision you are working on…
Anyways, got all the old caps removed, board deep cleaned then slowly installed all the new electrolytics based on my reference photos. Tedious but done properly and safely!
With the mainboard recapped I then cut and placed brand new thermal pads on the top and bottom side (7 in total) and moved focus to the optical drive. This was just going to get a cleaning and fresh grease, lens cleaning and new drive belt. Process is quite simple on these, top comes off with just 4 screws then slide out tray, 2 screws let you pop that right off and one more screw and a plastic cover comes out to reveal the drive belt! Got the new belt on and after cleaning (and swapping in an OEM tray cover) got some fresh grease on there and drive re-assembled!
At this point with all main components serviced I could assemble enough to test… and found the drive reading issue. Tried all 3 disc types and pristine copies, and no matter what any disc I inserted would spin up slowly then back down, a half dozen times or so and then just stop, sitting there completely stalled. Just when I thought it had given up if I left it in the tray for another minute or so it would out of nowhere spin up again and load the disc! Really strange behavior I had not seen before. Once in game it seemed pretty good, maybe a skip here or there during FMV but certainly functioning.
One quick google search on this symptom led me to the discovery of the PMAP tools and a very helpful tutorial vid from ModzVilleUSA. Long story short, there are tools you can use running on a PC and connected to the PS2 via serial USB to read values and calibrate the optical drive with several people in the comments mentioning problems similar to this being resolved. So I reached out to the customer, confirmed that while they primarily used FreeMcBoot / HDD it would be nice to have drive working and were ok with a slight delay. So I hopped on amazon, got a few of the UART adapters (in case one was flakey) and waited a few days for it to arrive.
Once here I got PMAP tools on my PC, soldered the 3 wires to the GH-015 mainboard and connected to the UART then followed the tutorial. Quite easy, basically you give some commands to spin up the disc after moving laser sled to outer rings and then take readings on the “jitter” value while tweaking the gears (one for height and one for angle) until you get the jitter value as close to the zeroes as you can (this one was in the higher 6’s which is wildly out of spec). Then once that was complete, I grabbed 3 discs that were in absolute pristine condition (this was emphasized) for CD format, single layer DVD and dual layer DVD. All 3 passed the auto elect calibrations and then I was done. To my amazement, on insertion all discs would now boot in less than 5-10 seconds, completely night and day difference from before!
Knowing the system was fully operational and working much better than before, I signed off on the work, and began final reassembly. Special care is always taken when moving the optical drive around and the eject/power button as those flexes can’t take that much abuse and you do NOT want to find out one slid out when it’s all back together (ask me how I know 😡)
Once assembled I gave the shell another quick wipe down then applied some Aerospace 303 UV spray to restore shine and protect it and staged it for the final bench testing and photos! It booted up my copy of Monkey Island right away so I let it run for a while then played some and thats another order in the books for 2026!
Customer here, Jeff is and has always been an amazing person to work with. I’m extra happy he took the extra mile on this as even though I use my HDD mostly, I have a large collection of disks and this thing probably gets the most use out of all my retro consoles. I wish I had my original PS2 fat still, this one I got only a few years ago from eBay as I’m sure you can tell from the breakdown. He’s previously restored my Gameboy, Gamegear, and full Sega tower of power and it’s all still working amazingly! Thanks again for the amazing work!