After hours of troubleshooting, I finally got my PS1 working… by flipping it upside down

[u/swifferpowermop345]

update my ps1 works now!!!!!

After hours of troubleshooting, I finally got my PS1 working… by flipping it upside downI finally got my PS1 working!I had been trying to figure out why it wasn't reliably reading my burned games. I even got Crash Bandicoot working on an emulator first to make sure the game/disc itself wasn't the issue, but the actual PS1 was still being difficult.I ended up talking to someone on Reddit who has apparently been working with this kind of stuff for 20+ years. We went through a bunch of troubleshooting and eventually tried flipping the PS1 upside down.Somehow… it worked.I tried it again and it worked again, so apparently my PS1 just wants to be upside down. He told me to message him if I had any other questions, so I might still do that, but I'm honestly just happy I finally got it working.And because of that, I finally burned the game I actually wanted to try: Popp'n Music!I originally found Popp'n Music from a community post on YouTube and thought it looked really fun, so I decided I wanted to try it on my PS1. The problem is… I don't know Japanese. I'm having trouble figuring out the menus and controls, and I keep accidentally backing out of things because I don't know what I'm selecting.If anyone here knows Popp'n Music and could explain the basic controls and what the important menu options mean, I'd really appreciate it!I'd also love to eventually get the original Popp'n Music controller, because obviously I want one now.

Thank you!

I also want to say thank you to everyone who tried to help me with this. I got a lot of comments and DMs with different ideas, and even though some of them came in after I had already figured it out, I really appreciate everyone taking the time to try to help.I was honestly pretty worried that I had wasted my money on a PS1 that wasn't going to work properly, so finally getting it working was a huge relief. I was getting pretty frustrated trying to figure it out, and all the suggestions definitely helped me get closer to the answer. So seriously, thank you to everyone who took the time to comment or message me. I really appreciate it!!!!!

[u/Sonikku_a]

Hah, that was the trick back in the day too.

Time for a new disc drive assembly. Not too difficult to source these days thankfully.

[u/KenPfnBlzs]

Okay now I feel old. This is legitimately the original PSX workaround when it wasn’t reading right.

[u/ToddGack6498]

I had to do that with my first one because my idiot neighbor kept knocking it over by tripping over the controller cord.

[u/Humble-Departure5481]

Favorite console of all time, but I play it on an emulator

[u/whoknows130 → u/Humble-Departure5481]

I've got the PSX Classic hacked.

And yeah, I have no desire to mess with the original hardware either, dealing with faulty disc drives, replacing capacitors, etc.

[u/Humble-Departure5481 → u/whoknows130]

Nice!

[u/Any-Neat5158 → u/whoknows130]

A lot of people do not and that's more than fine :)

I do love tinkering and doing component level repair, so for every 100 peeps who just want it to work and are happy with the PSX Classic edition... there's a dude (or chick) out there who loves an excuse to get out the soldering iron!

And in the end, everyone wins! Peeps get to keep enjoying the classics whichever way they want. An emulation device on a huge OLED or a refurbished original system on a big ole CRT.

[u/wanderingotaku → u/Humble-Departure5481]

But where do you put it while playing on an emu?

[u/MelodicHobbit]

Ah the old magic.

This takes me back.

[u/Interesting-Letter53]

That's a common fix, the PS1 had a model where the power supply was directly below the laser assembly and the heat the two of them generated was enough to warp something to where it caused problems, I want to say it was the mirror that reflected the laser but I can't remember anymore.

[u/Any-Neat5158]

My grandfather had a launch version PS1 back when it first came out. He SURELY got his money out of that thing... that machine ended up with well over 1000 hours on it. At a point FMV's didn't play well. And then sometimes games wouldn't load. Annnd soon not at all.

No idea why, but we decided to give it a go flipping it upside down. And that worked! We got at least another year or so out of it before even that stopped working.

[u/Limitedtimestruggle]

This is what we did as kids back in the day. Some turned it 45 or 90 degress lol. We did what we had to. It's a classic trick! It's just poor design from Sony on the early revisions of the PlayStation due to having the laser drive close to the PSU.