After having owned my ps2 for several years my laser had begun to get worn and skipped on certain games so I went to adjust the voltage. After that my back ups ceased to work. I have absolutely no idea what happened.
What I did exactly was decrease the voltage by about 10-15% for both the cd and dvd reader for the ps2. After that my normal ps2 dvd's, cd's, and imports work just fine, even swap magic works just fine, however, the second I put a back up in it the screen freezes and doesn't load anything.
I use swap magic 2.0 for dvd's along with dvdloader7 and swap magic 3.0 for cd's alond with cdloader7. My ps2 is a scph-39001 with a flip top lid. Most of my backups are on so-so media, but they all worked.
I've tried re-adjusting the voltage to a factory default, cleaning the lens, adjusting the lens angle, taking apart the ps2 laser aparatus and putting it back together, trying different back ups, adjusting other screws and cleaning out my system with a can of air. At this point i'm pretty busted. If anyone can think of anything or, please, pretty pretty please, send me a picture of their pots, pots = the screws that control the voltage, on a working back up machine like mine it would be greatly appreciated.
I don't think I damaged the laser because everything else works, in fact it works better than before.
