Real easy way to tell is play An original game,
If the original plays fine your laser wont be ditry,
It was your media/burn speed like I told you,
I would try an original game before you go into cleaning the lens.
If any original plays fine its your backup that is the problem,
(your media,media burnspeed,or a bad copy....expecially is you downloaded it)
But if an original wont play then I would clean the lens,
with isopropyl alcohol and a q-tip.
(it doesnt take much alcohol either).
i have a slimline v12 and it played all my backups perfect, but after about 3 months the games would take longer to load, then the video scences would skip. the originals still played 100% fine. the problem is that the lasers focus is set at the height of the swap magic disk, when you swap it out, the disk is not in the same spot. so after a while my ps2 would not read any of my backups, after reading post on here i though too it was my burner/media, turns out not true either.
i bought a new ps2 v12 and all my old backups work now with the same dvd's and same swap magic.
bring your backups to a friends modded ps2 and see if they work on his.
that must be onlt only with new pstwo models,
I have heard of changing the voltage but not what you said the problem is that the lasers focus is set at the height of the swap magic disk,
I have never heard of this before,
I also have only models v4 and v7,
and have never had a pstwo console.
But it may be true,
Can anyone confirm?
opening and closing the tray resets the laser height. thats why its good to do the mod where sensor 2 is soldered shut and sencor 1 is on a switch. i usually allow it to detect swap on a dvd-r then lock the thing.
how does the swap magic still work if the ps2 still detects the lid opening? hmm
anyways,
i was a little bored and decided to show you what some disc look like in terms of errors,
this is comparing the orignal MERCENARIES PS2 disc with backup using Ritek 8x(25$ for 100pack) and Ritek 4x OEM (44$ for 100pk)