Late PS1 disc quality worse?

[Xan]

When testing a bunch of stuff on my SCPH-5502, I came across this NTSC-U GH copy of Mega Man Legends that is basically in completely mint condition, you'd have to look very closely to see any kind of scratches on it. Despite this, when the Capcom animation appeared, it would go haywire, freezing and playing all sorts of random speech clips from the game. If I was instead fast enough to press start, it would just lock up on the loading screen. I had to pull out my SCPH-7502 to get this game to work.

Returning to the SCPH-5502, I then tested a copy of Rockman Dash 2 that looks to have been resurfaced in a cheap machine, fine scratches all over it - played just fine. I noticed that these two discs are different physically - the GH one has an extra area with a fine ring past the "thick" black ring that the other doesn't have, and seems a tad lighter as well. I went through my stash to find other discs like this, and these are all 2000 and later games (the GH MML has a 2002 copyright on the back). A scratched or resurfaced one blackscreened after the boot logo, and another mint one actually got to the menu but the music stuttered right away, so that one also has problems.

I went through my entire collection to find the most scratched up game and this still worked basically flawlessly (FMV+redbook audio). I don't know, but to me, that is enough of an argument to avoid these "thin ring" types of discs when possible. Seems that once the PS1 was relegated to a bargain bin console, they switched to some low quality manufacturing for the discs.

[AllocMem]

Interesting. I have a mostly mint copy of WipEout 3 NTSC. I unsealed it 3 years ago and it's only been played once since I prefer the European special edition, so most of my hours are on that version. I haven't checked when the disc was manufactured but it didn't show any signs of rot when I used it so I think I am good? Of course that could've changed recently, maybe I should go be sure.

[Xan]

Funny that you mention that game, because that most scratched game I mentioned is a copy of Wipeout 3 SE. Whole disc is covered in scratches yet it somehow always worked perfectly, and even in that 5502 console that I think has bad caps in the CD area it only showed maybe one or two stutters in the FMV. Not a cheap game these days...

The "thin ring" type of disc I have so far only encountered as NTSC-J and NTSC-U so far, my black label PAL FFIX, which is a 2001 game, is not of that type. I think it really warrants an investigation as to what exactly is going on with these "thin ring" discs. Not sure if pressed discs can have a high error rate, or maybe they are marginally thinner resulting in problems, or just use some inferior material that is harder to read? The drive in my 5502 is still the original one, easily distinguishable by the black cover.

I am not sure that "disc rot" on PS1 games really exists. Some of the photos that people have posted are just of mechanical damage on the top, although I do have some discs that have fingerprints that don't wipe off. But I don't recommend wiping discs anyway, it's just bound to cause scratches, even when using microfiber cloth or whatever.

[neorichieb1971]

No talk of eliminating the drive itself?

The drive has 2 problems that occur. The laser not reading due to wear and tear. The 2nd one is the track on which the lens sits, its too near the power supply which gets hot and warps the plastic cogs and rails on which the lens sits. The easiest way to determine if its the track rail is turn the machine up side down and load the game up. If the data of the game is in a position where the track rail is warped it will struggle to reach that data, but turning it upside down will totally make the problem go away due to gravity. The data on PS1 discs is on the inner circle, so if you have problems loading a disc you need to look nearer the center circle rather than the outer circle.

Apparently later PS1 lasers used metal rails instead of plastic. I use my PS2 for PS1 discs so I don't have these problems.

[Xan]

I'm pretty sure that 5502 is the console where I once measured the caps near the DSP+servo chip at close to or over 20 ohms. This is what I would try to address before swapping the drive. It's probably not as reliant on the caps as the Gamecube, but the ESR being that high won't help the reading ability.

I have replacement drives in some of my other consoles, they work alright but are still jankier than the originals. On some the spindle pulls out or gets stuck if you push too much, so it's easy to scratch a disc. I prefer to use these with burned discs only if possible. The point of the thread is that totally scratched up discs of the older type work mostly fine in that machine, while the newer type doesn't work even when the disc is mint. It could well be drive wear related and made worse by some characteristic of these newer discs.

I don't care for playing PS1 on PS2 personally. Those are disc scratch machines, slims especially but also even fat models, and there is no way I'll be putting some valuable PS1 game into one of those things.