Finally got my PS1 fat model spinning discs again after 6 weeks of tinkering
I picked up a beat-up PS1 at a garage sale near Dayton back in July for $10. The disc drive was totally dead, so I spent the last month and a half replacing the laser assembly and recapping the power board. After three failed attempts at aligning the new laser, it finally read a copy of Crash Bandicoot this morning. Has anyone else found those ribbon cables on the early models to be super fussy to seat properly?
Hang on, you're telling me the fat boy models actually used a totally different laser? I thought it was just a bigger housing with the same guts inside. That's wild if true. I always figured they just shoved a bigger lens in front of the same diode to spread the beam out more. But a whole different laser source would explain why those things were so finicky and why they had that weird buzzing sound. Gotta look into this because that changes how I think about those old machines completely.