Hiya! I opened my ps2 to clean it up (it's a PAL 50004 , GH-023 mobo that I purchased when they where the current ps2 machines for sale) and I noticed there is no romeo mod at all. I have this ps2 since I bought it some 10+ years ago IIRC and it has a DMS4SE Pro... never failed me and always read my dvds (95% of them are RITEK G04 disks) so I was wondering if romeo was really needed... I can easily make the mod just in case but I would appreciate some thoughts first before I mess with a working machine :friendly_wink: TIA for any info!
i bumped into this one: http://sksapps.com/diagrams/ps2/laserfix/romeo/romeo.html though, i have 2 V9's and neither has the mod in place, also never had any issues with either. (mind you these have been in heavy use.) i dont remember even finding it really being necessary for a v9 back when i modded my machines either, though, that's a long time ago so maybe it wasnt that commonly known fault back then. For some reason i have a faint memory of it being more needed on a later machine, a V12 or so perhaps, or am i confusing it something else ? maybe someone with better memory could confirm
I did some searching and found that l_oliveira replied in a thread in psx-scene that the romeo fix is a "lie" http://psx-scene.com/forums/f110/sh...aser-fix-even-if-i-dont-need-right-now-63658/ my v9 also had VERY heavy dvd usage... seems that any kind of fix is not needed with good media
Yes, you should use romeo fix. This it's not lia at all. Your can burn drive the same, but with less probability.
All romeo mod achieves is make the lens slower when the drive is reading the disc. In the case of a mechacon crash it will still burn the lens. So it's a LIE. Use the pic fix which "kills" the lens driver if the mechacon interrupts stop. That is "a proper fix" and happen to be what SONY itself used on the 70001s with fix (GH-032).
Where we can obtain pic fix info? (info diagrams and hex) I remember only that it's based on PIC 12c50X series
Once again l_oliveira is an encyclopedia of PS2 knowledge, thanks!!! Looking forward for more info on that pic fix as well
The laser chip fix is only available for the v12 with diagrams, I have never found diagrams for v9/v10 models or correct resistor values.
I'm still of the opinion that if you only ever use legitimate games on your PS2, your laser will be fine I mean, it's not like PS2 games are expensive anymore, why would you want to play burnt games?
My original Japanese PS2 was only ever used for playing original games, and the optical pickup failed in that. I've seen a bunch of other PS2s that were never modified that had disc reading problems too. Having said that, the specific problem that this thread is talking about (burnt out tracking coils) does seem to be far more common in units that have a modchip fitted - but I have seen it on unmodified consoles too.
Burnt tracking coils happen when (mostly burnt) discs have bad ECC data. That causes the mechacon to crash and unfortunately it's a feature, not a bug. A console which reads only SONY original discs will mostly have other faults, such as worn laser diodes, which actually is a common fault with all kind of optical drives. If you use the PS2 to watch DVD videos you're risking burnt coils as the discs can have production flaws which could trigger the coils frying behavior. The problem is that normal drives are designed to "deal with it" while the PS2 is designed to "freak out and crash" if a disc has mastering problems or physical flaws. Scratches can also cause such problems due to the random nature of the errors it cause. SONY really deserved get sued the way they did.
Well thats a shame. in an ideal world you need something to shutdown or restart the PS2 or shut it down if mechacon crashes. My old V9 got stolen. never had an issue with that, however my current options are a V9 or a v16 that doesn't read DL discs.
just for the record I did not do the romeo fix on my v9 I also got a v10 with a messiah2 chip that I upgraded to crystal2 , and it didn't have any fix at all as well... still going strong after all these years.
