So this is only currently happening on older, non-slimline PS2s, right?

Yeah, it is a fairly common and well-known problem for the early models of the PS2.

As mentioned in a previous post, it has something to do with the assembly the focuses the laser (moves it up and down minutely). It is mostly fixed, but any PS2 bought in the first 2-3 years, or 3-4 years at the big box (they apparently held back more stock of older models) may have issues.

There were a lot of threads and websites all over... I'll see if I can find some.

There was a class action lawsuit and all that crap as well. I know there was a lot on PlanetFeedback about two years ago.

Got my PS2 back today. Tried a couple of games in it and it seems to be working fine. The Invoice said it had a 90-day warranty now. It's the same unit, so i'm guessing they just replaced the laser assembly.

I'm debating now whether i should sell it on EBAY or trade it in at EB (and sell the network adapter and multitap and one of the controllers) If i'm lucky on ebay I'll probably get 125 for everything. Turn around and buy a new slim PS2, rather than have one around that may re-break at any moment.

Any thoughts?

I think what you're talking about is the blue-disk error, where the laser gets misaligned just enough to not play blue disks (or sometimes not play gold disks). My first generation PS2 has this, and I've had to open it up and play with the little gear to realign it.

This error involves some kind of grinding, which I've never heard before, and seems related to GTA San Andreas.

As a side note, back in the day my PS1 broke (the common, turn-it-upside-down to get it to work problem) because of Resident Evil 1. Worked totally fine until I bought and played that game...

I bought my PS2 in May 2004. Up until the following November there were no problems, then I purchased San Andreas. A big mistake! When I began playing it, a clicking noise started on my console and it continually scratched the game. The console finally stopped working about two weeks later and I sent the machine to Sony U.K to get repaired. Two months later (February 2005) I finally got it back. Stupidly I put San Andreas back in the PS2 and it crashed about 15 seconds later. The PS2 is crap. My advice is to trade it in before you start having problems and invest in a better console.
markieb

So it seems like San Andreas (and any future games that use the same technology) is the system killer, huh? I'm surprised I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else, considering the total volume that game sold (I never bought it myself).

Glad that I am waiting for the Xbox release to pick this up.

Luckily i'm on the last level of SanAndreas. I listen to my PS2 now while playing it, and it really does thrash the laser around alot, constantly reading from the disc. I'd love to play GTA a little more, and explore some of the hidden stuff, but if its a trade off between the health of my PS2, and squeezing an extra 3 or 4 hours of gameplay out of GTA, then i'll gladly move on to a new game.

I wonder if rockstar knows about this

That's exactly what I said! Of course, when it starts breaking Xboxes...

Hey my friend had this problem in his ps2 the other day and it has a very simple solution. After staring at an open ps2 for about 10 minutes and trying various things, I figured the grinding noise must be one of the moving parts in the cd tray. So all you need to do to fix it, is take some vasaline on a q tip, and lube up the rails that move the laser, and while you're at it lube up the rail that opens the disk drive. Put it back together, fire it up, and it should work just fine again. This is a very simple solution that will save you a lot of time sending it into sony and having them fix it, or even worse selling it for a problem that is so easy to fix. So just do this and you'll be back to gaming in no time!