Do modchips damage your PS2's laser?

[DanieSA]

I live in South-Africa and we don't get a lot of modchips here. The only 1 available is the Magic 3 which costs R750($116). I am have heared rumours that the modchips damages your laser. Is this true??? :confused:

[Zeus]

The only thing that may damage your PS2 is a shoddy install of a chip, not the actual chip itself ;).

[Z80]

Also some people believe that modchips damage the laser because they wonder why their laser died after getting a modchip when infact they may have been playing shitty burned media or smoking or a number of other things. The modchips themselves can't damage your laser unless you do that yourself when installing the chip like Zeus said.

[ToolPunk]

Actually yes, it depends on the version of the PS2 though and it damages it indirectly. Like I said it depends on the version some do not have this problem.

[mercurius]

Some crappy chips actually have the pontencial to damage the console. Magic and its cheap clones are actually one of those. Here in our region all MagicPS2s were called back to exchance the chip for another one.

[Lerpa]

5v chips will hurt the ps2, thats what i heard. I know that the magic chips use 5v. Newer chips only use 3.3 volt to power the chip.

[wiggim]

grey area, no one really knows. On the V9 fatboys, a chip install would usually burn out the laser unless a romeo mod was done (change the 12V supply to the dvd driver IC to 5V) Generally speaking, the only thing that burns out your laser is bad burns on cheap media. Laser units are pretty cheap now anyway. $30US should get you a brand new one.

I am sure you can get more than the Magic 3, probably not locally though. I would try for a 3.3V chip as those seem more stable and have better signal strength in the wires so they don't have to be as short as possible, or interfere with other components on the mainboard.

[Lerpa]

The first months when the v9 come out alot of ps2 came back to us with fucked lasers. The fist mod was the resistor mod, that sucked. But since we applied the romeo mod soon after the problems dissapered. After that the v10 came with the same issue and the romeo mod should be done on that version to.

The most inportant thing is to use good quality media as verbatim,One,TDK or Traxdata. Do not use noname cds/dvds (in case you dont wont your ps2 to break down fast)

The only stable 5v chip i have ever installed was the Neo4 chip, and yes that was back in the days :)

[19Ripper75]

OK. Here's my situation (I figured this would be a good place to post this, since I was also wondering if modding my PS2 would fry the laser).

In November of 2004, I sent my PS2 away to a company to have it Modded. When it came back, I couldn't have been happier with the chip(DMS4Lite). Back in May/June of this year, my PS2 started having problems recognizing the chip, only booting originals. After unplugging it for about a week, it worked fine, up until yesterday. After watching the movie Stealth, I was in the mood to play Ace Combat 4 & 5, only to turn the PS2 on and get the dreaded Red Screen of Death. I ripped the machine apart to check for loose wires, but there weren't any. It will only boot up original games now after hitting reset about 10-20 times. It will not play dvd's or backups anymore. I'm beginning to wonder if they did a crappy job on the install, This machine was sent to them new with only maybe 5 hours of gameplay, and it's only seen about 200 hours gameplay since being modded. What the hell is wrong with this thing all of a sudden :mad: ?

[19Ripper75]

One more thing. My PS2 is a V10.

[wiggim]

V9/10 consoles need a romeo mod to protect against the laser frying. Although this may not be necessary, its ussally custom to do it on these console revisions because it has been proved reliable (MI in a V9 for 1.5 years with at least 3 hours use every day - no problems yet) There should be a chip in the top left LA6XX on it (forget the name) that has a pin lifted and a wire ran under the ribbon to a large via on that side. The chip has a crystal in the middle and no pins coming off from the middle of the chip on either side. If this hasn't been done its possible that your laser is burnt out.

Take the top off your DVD drive and boot up the PS2 like that (keep away from hovering over it and getting laser in the eyes) see if the laser turns on (red beam comes from it - again don't burn your retnas out) or spins the spindle. (should spin about 10 times then stop, go up and down, spin again) If it does, your laser should be fine - give it a cleaning while its open if you want with some lighter fluid and cotton swab.

You didn't happen to update the chip recently? I would try to do a force update on it from a USB stick/network (unless you can get a CD to read) also, all the CD-related chip connections are on the back of the board attached to very small via's, or to the huge sony chip in the center of the board.

Hope this helps you.

[19Ripper75]

Yes, I did update the BIOS to Toxic Ver.1.4, which seemed to work fine. I tried the drive with the lid off before I posted my problem, and the beam did turn on, and spin up. So, now I guess I'll try to do a force update using my MaxDrive USB device, but can you tell me how, cause I have no clue, lol.

[19Ripper75]

Actually, the Toxic BIOS Ver. 1.3 exceeds my USB drive's capacity, so maybe you could tell me how to do a force update via network. I should also note that my PS2 doesn't even seem to recognize the DMS4 now, so I odn't know if this will even work, although I hope it does.

[wiggim]

Your going to need to somehow load it up, I know there is a force-CD update feature on the DMS chip you can look into. I take it you don't have any friends who have a modded PS2 that can FTP to mem cards? I recommend not using a CD if you did it last time and it didn't work, but it may be your only way as nothing will boot CD-wise.

Do you happen to have an elf launcher on either of your memory cards or a HDD installed? If you have an elf launcher like LaunchELF that lets you configure on the PS2 just config it to the misc host, which should be your stick and it should have your elf there.

If you have a HDD installed with a loader on the mem card, you will have to uninstall it and put it in your PC and use WinHIIP to upload the CD image of the update to the HDD and then launch it off there.

I don't think a network adapter will be of use to you right now, unless you have a friend with a modchip who don't have one. If you have a network adapter and FTP server on the PS2 side you can upload something like launchelf, or the update itself (space permitting) to your PS2 memory card and use the DEV1 mode on your chip to make that load up. You should be able to select it in the configuration - it should be the boot mode. Usually DEV1 boots the boot.elf in the apps folder on the first memory card. So the update/launcher would have to be in MC0:/apps/boot.elf (not positive on case - it shouldn't really matter)

Other than that I really don't know what to say. I don't think that the DMS supports using the network to reflash - could be wrong though - if it did and you knew someone with an adapter you could borrow theirs to do the update.

Go to the DMS site and see how to force-update your PS2 if none of the above will work for you. Maybe burn off the older update that you knew worked and foce it and see what happens. I don't think that you can ruin a DMS chip because they have backup flashes in them. Not 100% positive on the lites, but it should be there. Right now though the PS2 is pretty much useless to you so you can't really lose anything.

[wiggim]

Actually, the Toxic BIOS Ver. 1.3 exceeds my USB drive's capacity, so maybe you could tell me how to do a force update via network. I should also note that my PS2 doesn't even seem to recognize the DMS4 now, so I odn't know if this will even work, although I hope it does.

Umm, you have to extract the CD image that its in and get the files inside. They are usually dummied. I can't see how an update for a chip with at most 1MB of space can exceed your drive capacity.

You should be able to select in settings network update. Then it should show an address on the screen. Make sure your router/gateway/computer is on the same gateway and subnet or it won't work. Next go to that address in like internet explorer. it should pop up a select dialog looking for the update file. Select that file and hit OK and it should update for you.

[wiggim]

If you hold the disable button for the chip on boot (have to check the bios info file for the button) it don't show that it is disabled? This is a sure way to tell if the chip is working in the PS2 console. If the chip won't detect and you can't get into the configuration for it then there is probably little to no hope to reprogram it with a PS2. Your only hope then is to try to do the CD force update. It should be documented in the bios info file somewhere. Usually you have to hold reset for such an amount of time, or hit it so many times. I think the DMS line is to hit reset 3 times fast.. not positive though - this should boot u into the chips program mode.

[19Ripper75]

Nothing is working. It won't even recognize an original game now. I can't get any access to the chips settings screen(usually holding square on startup does it).

[19Ripper75]

It's done. I give up. The piece of crap PS2 is in millions of pieces, sitting in the dumpster in the alley. I've come to only one conclusion: If you're too cheap to buy the game instead of copying it, then don't get into gaming at all. I'm buying a new PS2, which will not be modded, I'll just buy only the games I like the most, and nothing else.

Just to clear things up, My PS2 was Modded by a professional, not by me. I got a lousy year out of it. Might have gotten more if they'd have bothered to put the romeo mod on it!

[DanieSA]

I have found a Matrix Infinity Clone modchip! I do not know if i should get it because it is a clone!!! I need help pls!!! I could get me a DMS4 EZI Pro from divineo!!! what should I do?!?! :confused:

[somewhat_]

Ok, so if modchips don't damage your ps2 laser, then what are the "Comsoft Slim Fix V4 PStwo" and "Subzero Fix" for?

[funkie]

they are for v12 consoles that have lasers that burn out without being chipped

if you use G2 summ0ne fix is need for v12 every other version needs no fix

[Charbless]

thats right the v12 laser burns out quicker then the other models lots of reports about it I dont know how Sony get away with it its beyond a joke.