PS1 PAL 5502 , only detects original discs as Audio CD's

hi members , i bought a broken PS1 just for the screws and it needed a new Spindle so i put that on. Interestingly it won't boot original discs (goes to menu) , i will leave a video below of the drives behavior. Btw this hasn't got a modchip in it.

I have tried a few things........

-Clean Lens with IPA
-Lube the Drive Mech
-Reseat Drive Cables
-Drive does emit Red glow

It would be good if i could get the Drive to work , the Drive measures over 1600 ohms and another exact Drive i have is about 1200 ohms not sure what's going on there. I did however get the 1200 ohm working Drive and place it in this particular PS1 and original games boot.




chat soon

 

I would start by putting the sled assembly from the working drive into the one that doesn't work and see if that boots.

If it doesn't, it's probably a bad spindle motor (or possibly disc height). If it does, then it's probably a tired laser diode, although you could try carefully cleaning the optics in the bad pickup.

For whatever reason, I have seen a lot of bad (I.E. low output) laser diodes in the SCPH-55xx machines.

 

hi Mesh i was hoping to hear from you , great info all noted and will attempt. Btw there was a tick sound when i first got this PS1 but after a few of the things i did it has disappeared. Wonder if that is a clue ?

thanks for chiming in

 

OK, that could be a bad spindle motor - a repetitive ticking noise on these machines is often caused by one or more of the wires that form the brushes for the motor wearing though and the tick is the sound of the end of the wire clicking on the gaps of the commutator.

Try spinning the spindle while listening to the motor and comparing the two drives.

 

today i worked on the drive , i removed 2 cogs and inspected them no missing teeth. Removed the sled piece no missing teeth , i cleaned all the pieces up and the outer mech. Replaced the White Lithium Grease and reassembled , tested and i got Time Crisis 1 to boot to the 'Now Loading' screen and it wouldn't go any further. Another game got stuck at the black PS1 logo.

but at least some progress.......

i did however ruin the replacement Spindle , i tried to raise it a little by inserting a flat head screwdriver in a gap and pressed down. The plastic was then permanently bent and with further inspection there was a crack. I need to learn how to raise Spindles without damaging them , and also getting the height perfect the first time would be best.

i'm not going to take this drive to a major thread as most would say just buy another PS1 as they are cheap which is correct. But at least i got some info and knowledge from Mesh which was very useful. I am getting some more broken PS1's next week , what i want from them are the case screws as i've misplaced some from my working PS1's.

 

IMO, it's always worth trying to fix these things - they might be common and cheap now, but they are also old and the supply is only going to decrease with time. One thing I would strongly recommend if you intend to be doing work on these CD based consoles is to get an oscilloscope - an old 20MHz analog scope works really well for this (you can use a modern DSO too, but they require much more careful setup in this application than an analog scope), and they are cheap.

If you get a few working units and scope the signals in the drive assembly then you will quickly get a feel for what it should look like - and using a scope you can spot weak signals, noise, jitter and lots of other signal problems all at the same time.

The exact location of the test points varies from unit to unit, but what you want is a signal that looks like this:



This is the read signal coming from the CD, and once you get familiar with it you can spot all sorts of CD transport problems using it.

 

When you had the drive disassembled, did you look at the rails wear and tear?
This is the number 1 problem with all PSX drives, even the newer ones with the metallic read head.
Usually the laser diode is still fine, and if the mechanics weren't misaligned, it would produce a solid reading.

Here's a nice (but really old ;p) repair guide. It has nice diagrams and shows exactly what the issue is:
http://nuangel.net/pcdownloads/PlayStation_Laser_Repair.pdf

Edit:
The 2 motors do go bad as well, as TriMesh said. That will increase the noise the machine makes, but usually it will still work.
Performance won't be great though, as the electronics are constantly in "recovery" mode.