Strange PSTwo experience...

I had the oddest thing happen today. A customer brought in his system saying it wouldn't play one of our games. So put the game in (Gran Turismo 4) and hook his system up. I turn it on and all I get is a black screen, No sound or anything. At first I thought I hooked it up wrong so I tried running it through a VCR and ended up with the same results. At this point I'm sure it's hooked up right and I'm about to tell him it must be his system when I decide to open the lid... Boom it immediately goes to the browser screen. I try three different games and they all pop up fine but if you put in Gran Turismo 4 (I tried 4 different copies of it) and turn it on you get the black screen. No sound or loading screen. If you turn it on and put the game in then it just spins. No DRE message. Just spinning. I've never seen anything like it though to be honest I’ve little experience with these slim systems. Anyone have any ideas here?

 

I might be pushing it... but could it be the motor that spins the disc? Maybe GT4 is a little bit heavier than most PSTwo games and this machine's motor is not working properly enough to spin it... but that'd give a DRE, wouldn't it?

It could also be set by default to, somehow not use the AV-Out, but the thing for those home theatre things? But only for that disc? Maybe there's an option ONLY on that one?

I have no other idea here.

 

It could be a compatibility issue... though i would find it really hard to believe that sony would put out a new revision without testing for copatibility with GT4.

 

parhaps because is dvd9?

 

That's double density, like Xenosaga? Some PS2s simply DON'T do double density. My friend's machine doesn't read any of them at all.

Still doesn't explain the totally blank screen instead of a regular DRE, though.

 

such a terrible defect, this probably why some dev are hesistant earlier on and someitmes still are about pressing games on dl for ps2.

 

thats what I would think, try Xenosaga and possibly Star Ocean (?)

 

Try a different copy of GT4. If the other copy booted up, then the customer currently has a defected copy of GT4. The small PSTwos support DVD9 right out of the box, because it says so on my box. Also, I don't think GT4 is a DVD9 game, is it?

 

GT4 is double layer. All ps2 should be able to read dual layer discs, many are not... Basicly the laser design sucks on ps2's.

 

Tell me about it, I've had 3 seperate laser units die on me...

 

this isnt a unique problem at all. I fixed a ps2 and sold it to some guy and he emailed me saying it was broken. Of course it was GT4 causing problems. Some people have it happen with games like killzone on older systems, but that's not even dual disk. But the new slims are shit in a box, especially since Sony manufactured them for the sole purpose of cutting costs.

and yes, GT4 is a DVD9 game weighing in at around 6 gigs. It's only topped out in size by the already mentioned Xenosaga and Champions of Norrath. Developers kinda stayed away from larger sized dvd's for a reason..there's only like 4 or 5 games that even use it, with a collectors edition of madden being another one.

 

Time for you to get a new motherboard...

When a ps2 is having trouble reading a disc, it ups the amps to the laser. This makes the disc easier to read, but also begins to push the limits of an already fragile component. Depending on the motherboard revision, the safety limit for the laser amps may be missing/set wrong. End result, you put in a smudged disc, the system has trouble reading it and decides to blow up it's laser. There is a particularly defective version of the motherboard that tends to let the lasers blow themselves up more often, my guess is that's the version you have.

Xbox on the other hand slows down the spindle motor speed when it has trouble reading the disc. There are 3 settings, high, medium and slow. Normally a disc will be read at high speed until there is a problem reading data. Then the disc will switch to the next lowest speed. After a certain number of sectors have been read correctly, the spindle motor will speed back up. If the system can't read the disc at the slowest speed, it'll report back a disc read error.

I don't know how gamecube works...

 

They aren't all in the same PS2. The first two were in the one I bought a year after launch and the third occured after 6 months in the newer slimline version. Craptacular products all around.

 

In that case, buy a gamecube. I've only ever seen one busted gamecube... ;-)

 

well there are various versions that last better than others. I have a version 5 that only needed adjusting of the cog for it to work fine now.