Along with the previously restored and modded SNES, the customer also sent along this fat PS2 for a quick and simple refurbishment service! It arrived in pretty nice condition just the typical dust and dirt you see accumulate on these but the shell was in otherwise great condition with no cracks or major scratches. I began with a complete teardown and disassembly to get all the plastic parts in the wash process and assess the rest of the system.
All looked straightforward however it was obvious someone had been in here before not only from the Noctua fan mount installed on the rear but also the flexes were in very rough shape, barely connected and this would come back to haunt me later…
I recapped the mainboard first as its quite the chore compared to the PSU and best to get the tedious work out of the way. I desoldered every cap but then remembered Console5 doesnt provide polymer cap replacements as they are lifetime parts typically so I resoldered those back onto the board (4) along with all the new electrolytics from the Console5 kit!
The PS2 fat board is easy enough to work around but it can be tedious as there are no value or polarity or identifier markings on the board so you HAVE to have an exact match capacitor map or take a picture before doing any work, I did both just to be extra safe. But the process of having to look back through photo and confirm each cap vs just working down a list based on cap name/number is much slower. The pads are also quite tight against the cans so a little more care is needed on this than many other systems I work on!
PSU recap is a breeze, only 5 and my Hakko gun makes quick work of them. Both boards were deep cleaned with caps removed to get any dust or dirt from under the old caps!
Once both boards were fully recapped and cleaned and set aside the optical drive became the new focus. Its quite modular and easy to work on luckily. I found a ton of dirty and hair and debris inside the drive so i gave all parts a generous blast of air, wiped all down with ISO and applied fresh grease to areas that needed it, before swapping in a brand new quality drive belt from Console5!
Once I got the drive back together I then focused on quickly swapping in a new CR2032 and cutting/placing the new thermal pads on both topside and underside of the mainboard!
By this point the shell and all plastic parts were dry so I began the process of reassembly. I found 2 of the flexes from optical drive had the sturdy tab separating from the pins making insertion hard so i carefully peeled it back and added thin double sided tape in between to help correct this. The flex from the reset and power button were horribly bent and mangled but luckily still intact. Care has to be taken with this flex as it can be pinched and easily damaged if not cared for during reinstall.
The biggest issue was the controller board flex which would not clasp down and also had the splitting issue from pins to backer plastic. I again carefully separated and added double sided tape to secure the flex/pin end and add a slight bit of extra thickness so the clasp would really lock down tight on it. Reassembly here is tricky as you need to have it connected to both mainboard and controller port board before trying to reassemble but if you accidentally pull on it or let it fall while placing in the shell it can pop loose… ask me how I know 🤦♂️
Either way got everything connected up and fired the system up for a quick test to be sure all flexed were hooked up properly
Once operation was validated I confirmed it was good for final assembly and got it all put back together. I then fired it up, changed output to RGB so it would work on my setup and let it run in-game for several hours to be sure I was feeling warm air blowing out from fan (indicating thermal pads were working properly) and also that it was running stable. After a few hours of burn-in testing I played some Rygar and everything looked good so wrapped this order up!