Greetings. I did a search but had no success (story of my life, lol).
Here is my problem: V10 PS2 (fat) SCPH-50010. I bought it new several years ago and have never had any problems with it (have probably put fewer than 100 hours on it).
Yesterday I recieved swap magic 3.6 and a flip top. I installed the flip top (and put the white plastic/magnet in the new flip lid), and had difficulty getting the disk to load. So I popped out the magnet/plastic disk retainer and placed it directly on the Swap Magic DVD. When I hit reset it will spin up the disk and eithr go to the SM screen, the "there is no data" screen, or the browser screen. It seems somewhat random, but if I keep resetting I can get to the SM screen.
The lid seems to scrub against the white plastic/magnet, so I have been leaving it open for now.
So then I replace the SM disk with a back-up (using the white plastic/magnet to retain it), and hit x. I can see the laser shining through the disk (because the lid is open), but the disk doesn't spin (most of the time). It will sit there with the laser shining, making faint clicking noises and the SM screen frozen for a while, then the screen unfreezes and it says "not a valid PS2 disk" or something to that effect.
When the laser is on, if I lift up on the magnet, the spindle is spinning and the disk starts jumping around. But with the magnet, the magnet/disk don't want to spin. I can turn the disk by hand, and trying to give it a boost doesn't seem to help.
If I pop off the magnet, then put it back on sometimes it spins up the disk and will load.
I played around with this for a couple of hours last night, and was eventually able to boot and play two back-ups (Memorex 4x +R). All of the tutorials I have looked at indicate it is okay to sit the plastic/magnet directly on top of the disk/spindle. I also removed the top cover alltogether, and couldn't tell any difference.
I also tried this with another V10 PS2 SCPH-50001 (many more hours of use, but still in good working order) and had the *exact* same issue.
Because this is a fat unit, I have not blocked any sensors. And this model (both units) have the reset/eject buttons attached to the body and not the case so I don't see how I could have pinched a ribbon. It almost acts like the disk/magnet are not aligned correctly, but the disk can only sit one way on the spindle/post and doesn't appear to be supposed to click attach onto it (thus the need for the magnet).
Update: Partially figured out what was going on. Last night I apparently had the rear portion of the disks sitting on a small plastic protrusion at the back of the recessed area where the disk sits (where the lip sticks out). I repositioned the unit where I could see what I was doing and that fixed most of my problem. I'll probably take a dremel to the lip to shave it back some.
I now have 100% success with the low hours unit. On the higher hours unit, I can boot the SM disk and originals, but it will not boot back-ups. It acts like it is loading, then takes forever and nothing ever happens (on one game it made it to a screen that said loading, that appears for only a few seconds on the other unit, and sat there for 5 minutes or so before I gave up).
Tomorrow I'll research adjusting the laser power and possibly using a different brand of media. The same backups that play perfectly in the one V10 do not play at all on the other one.
I too am in the same boat as you, although I have a V.4 PS2 and a PS2 slim. All of my backups work perfectly with the PS2 slim.
The fat PS2 is a little more complicated. All originals work, although only a few of the backups work. My V.4 exhibits all of the symptoms that your PS2 does, which leads me to believe that the problem lies within the Fat Ps2 itself. To put it simply, I do not think that the flip top provides enough stability for the backup discs. I'm not 100% on this, especially since I still have a bit more testing to do with various media brands. Right now I use Maxell DVD-R, although I will attempt to use Verbatim DVD+R later tonight. I will post my results later on.
Best of luck.
**Edit**
After a little bit more testing, I've concluded that my problem is a combination of reassembly and media. When I have the magnet attached to the lid, sometimes it doesn't catch because it can't get close enough to the disc. As such my Fat PS2 would have a lot of difficulty just spinning the disc. This was fixed by removing the magnet and white holder from the lid and manually adding it and removing it.
After I did this, 95% of my Maxell DVD-R backups began functioning. However, there were still a few backups that would load, but when it came time to load a cinematic, they would find it difficult to read the outskirts of the disc. This was solved by using Verbatim DVD+R media.
fat PS2 Flip top cover problem noise disc read error scraping scrape
Just got my fliptop today and I have the same problem. It seems that little white puck with the magnet in it is not low enough to be doing it's job.
The scraping you may hear is the top of the disc making contact with that puck, and the magnet inside of the puck not sticking to the disc drive.
Initially my solution for a few hours was to take the white puck plastic thing out of the flip top lid and apply it manually in the center of the game. I was annoyed because I payed money for this flip top lid that doesn't work perfectly like it should. You shouldn't have to leave something heavy on top of your ps2 to insure it works.
Luckily I found a solution. If you have the same flip top as I do then follow this photo walkthru and you will no longer have this problem. Doing this will lower the thing that holds the white puck to where it should be.
First on the flip top lid remove the white plastic puck if you have it on there. Behind it on my fliptop was a piece secured by two screws.
There's the finished product and you can see the pennies in that picture kinda. Put that white puck disc plastic thing back where it goes and you should be good.
This makes that piece much lower than how it came out of the factory and it fixed my problem. Hope this works for you.
