Hi, I'm new on this forum; as I said on my presentation, I usually spend my Sunday in a flea market here in Milan, and so I was 2 days ago, when I suddely saw a sort of uncommon blue playstation 1 on a shelf and, knowing little information about it, I approached the vendor to give it a glance. It turned out it was a "Debugging station" I had only seen from Wikipedia, and happily bought it without caring about reducing the price (a modest 10 euros). Judging from the pictures on the net, my blue playstation is probably the one in the worst shape. First of all, the case is "tanned" by some intensive exposure to the sun, and then more serious problem: it doesn't work. There are writings that inform me it requires 12V DC delivered by a specific adaptor, which didn't came with the console, and is now unfindable: I tried to connect it through an iPod docking station adaptor which was 13V DC (One Volt more never hurt anyone, am I right?) and the blueish thing didn't show any sign of life. So I unscrew it and I found out that the very first contacts, I'm saying the ones that connect that unusual dock to the PSU board are unsoldered. I tried to replace the whole PSU with the one from my SCPH-7502 but the wires are different in shape and numbers. First of all, I would ask: having the solderings repaired, is there any danger delivering the console 13 out of the 12 Volt it requires? And then, what kind of PSX should I look for to get a compatible PSU to check if at least is something working inside the thing? I thank anyone who's got patience enough to explain me (who am quite unexperienced about PSX and other consoles) what I may do to bring this "broken gem" in working order.
For the colour, use Retrobrite. There's instructions on the web, and it won't ruin the colour. 1V over * shouldn't* be an issue, but it really depends. Fixing the traces are a good way to go, but I'm more interested in what you mean by "unsoldered". Are they literally not soldered to the board, or does it look like they were soldered in the past and then came loose?
It looks like they were soldered and they became loose. I see there are holes in the board with soldering material around them and partially on the 3 protruding parts of the "dock" which suggests me it should have been soldered once. I thought that the device should power up by simply having the "dock" displaced in the right way, but it didn't work, not even the typical light turned on, so I think they're ment to be soldered, otherwise it should have worked with the contacts in the right place - I presume - .
I see that all the time on psones the joints break if unplugged and plugged in too many times. Resolder it. BTW the connector on these things is weird the correct ac adaptor seems to be za12001gn. It is fairly cheap and common, apparently some digital cameras apparently use them, I suspect that the SCPH-10200 or DTL-10020 AC Adaptors would work too, good luck finding one of those.
There is nothing special about these consoles. Just fancy Sony equipment that is useless now and only good for collecting purposes. You don't need it to make games or actually debug games... lol.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7in25AQsR-ZUWVERFB4ZG5LaXc This is the PSU for mine. Can't open up the PSX today but maybe tomorrow?
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7in25AQsR-ZYXRSYllaODZUenc https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7in25AQsR-ZR0piRkt1WjRwMGs This is how the PSU board on mine looks if you want to compare...
I apologize not for having posted any additional information about my debugging station during the last month: university first and summer after took completely away any spare time I would have given to my beloved, ill console. I finally got 2 SCPH-1002 playstation's from the same market I had found the blue one in: bought them and decided to replace the whole power unit with a less "exotic" one, at least to discover if and how the thing worked. It ran the bios but then again I had to throw away the original cd reader as it had some problems reading some discs (weird thing, it worked perfectly with backup copies of Gran Turismo, not with the original one). Now it works even if in some situations it seems to be a little slower than my late ps1 (eg in the first moments a video is played and, awkwardy, when displaying smoke during a corner in Gran Turismo it someway reduces the framerate). Considering its many problems: - Missing parallel door cover - replaced power unit - replaced cd - ruined paint Someone thinks it's still worth anything for collectors? Edit: reading some articles, it seems to me that the special part in the blue psx (the one that makes it read any region cds and so) is the CD controller, right? Is that part put together with the cd reader or is it a different part? Because if it is together with the cd reader, my psx now has an ordinary psx cd reader, so it won't be able to play backups - and it is - so what's happened? Is it possible that someone's installed a modchip on it or simply the cd controller is located somewhere else? Thanks for all the advices
AFAIK, no, the CD controller (Mechacon) is not part of the CD reader (laser, etc). It is one of the chips (gotta love that word) in the mainboard.
Hi, I'm italian too, from Verona. I've opened a thread for my debug green one. Anyway you probably have to adjust the lens potentiometers. There is a guide here. http://dogbreath.de/PS1/LaserAlignment/Laser.html Try to find the best values for your console. P.S.: for better result you should try the latest PSOne optical group. The model is ksm 440 bam.