alright, i just bought an extra ps1 spch-5501 for a few bucks. the laser doesnt read cds it makes a lot of noise but no reading.
I replaced the whole laser assembly with a new one from dalbani on ebay, and it still does the same thing.
I dont have any luck fixing optical consoles. one time i was able to fix a sega cd model 2 and get it working again but that was after i replaced all of the caps and the laser pickup with new ones. I really just took a guess on that one, and got lucky it worked because id already tried everything else. I dont think the ps1 would need caps yet. its a much newer system.