Help needed with disc read errors

  • Thread starter FuryX21
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FuryX21

FuryX21

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Ok I've been playing NCAA Football 07 for several months now and just recently I've started getting disc read errors. When I opened up my PS2 to adjust the gearing, I discovered that the turnstyle thing that spins the discs is not "catching" the disc (apparently the turnstyle spins too fast to pick up the disc and spin it), resulting in the disc falling off the turnstyle and not being read. For a visual example, think of a penny on a frisbee. If you spin a frisbee around at a slow speed and drop a penny on it, the penny stays on. But if you spin the frisbee fast, the penny will fall off. Thats whats happening to my disc, with the turnstyle acting as the frisbee and the disc acting as the penny. I hope my explanation is clear. Anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this?
 
Nevermind, my dumb self just realized that this is happening because I don't have the lid on over the lens cover. The lens apparently doubles as a magnet to pull the turnstyle up far enough so when it spins the disc stays on instead of falling off.
 
How old is your PS2? Mine suffers from DREs, but it's limited almost entirely to newer CD-based games. It doesn't have any issues with older CD games or any DVD games.

It's a two-prong problem on my system. On the one hand, discs are being manufactured slightly differently now.. the center of the disc that the PS2 "grips" is actually thinner than it used to be, probably to save on raw materials. Just the center part, the data portion of the disc is the same.

This, combined with 6+ years of use.. and my system just can't grab the discs with as much force as it used to. So these new "thinner" CDs end up being gripped very loosely, and the system isn't able to spin them up.

To fix it, I used a combination of things.. mostly just standing the system vertically. I sometimes also jiggle it back and forth while it's loading, this seems to help, oddly enough (although it's a PS2.. the Xbox360 will devour your discs if you try this.. lol). Just for loading, really.. once the system recognizes that it has a CD in there, it'll work fine after that. And for the real hard cases, some scotch-tape around the center of the disc to thicken it up so the PS2 can grab it easier.

Although I did open my system up to clean the lens when it started giving me trouble, it turns out it wasn't required in my case.
 

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